# On the intersection of a sparse curve and a low-degree curve: A polynomial version of the lost theorem

* Corresponding author
2 MC2 - Modèles de calcul, Complexité, Combinatoire
LIP - Laboratoire de l'Informatique du Parallélisme
Abstract : Consider a system of two polynomial equations in two variables: $F(X,Y)=G(X,Y)=0$ where $F \in \rr[X,Y]$ has degree $d \geq 1$ and $G \in \rr[X,Y]$ has $t$ monomials. We show that the system has only $O(d^3t+d^2t^3)$ real solutions when it has a finite number of real solutions. This is the first polynomial bound for this problem. In particular, the bounds coming from the theory of fewnomials are exponential in $t$, and count only nondegenerate solutions. More generally, we show that if the set of solutions is infinite, it still has at most $O(d^3t+d^2t^3)$ connected components. By contrast, the following question seems to be open: if $F$ and $G$ have at most $t$ monomials, is the number of (nondegenerate) solutions polynomial in $t$? The authors' interest for these problems was sparked by connections between lower bounds in algebraic complexity theory and upper bounds on the number of real roots of ''sparse like'' polynomials.
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Cited literature [14 references]

https://hal-ens-lyon.archives-ouvertes.fr/ensl-00871315
Contributor : Pascal Koiran <>
Submitted on : Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - 10:53:21 AM
Last modification on : Friday, June 25, 2021 - 3:40:06 PM
Long-term archiving on: : Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - 2:00:38 PM

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### Identifiers

• HAL Id : ensl-00871315, version 2
• ARXIV : 1310.2447

### Citation

Pascal Koiran, Natacha Portier, Sébastien Tavenas. On the intersection of a sparse curve and a low-degree curve: A polynomial version of the lost theorem. Discrete and Computational Geometry, Springer Verlag, 2015, pp.16. ⟨ensl-00871315v2⟩

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