arXiv subjects

Jan Verschelde

Publications and source records attributed to Jan Verschelde.

50 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Solving Schubert Problems with Littlewood-Richardson Homotopies

We present a new numerical homotopy continuation algorithm for finding all solutions to Schubert problems on Grassmannians. This Littlewood-Richardson homotopy is based on Vakil's geometric proof of the Littlewood-Richardson rule. Its start solutions are given by linear equations and they are tracked through a sequence of homotopies encoded by certain checker configurations to find the solutions to a given Schubert problem. For generic Schubert problems the number of paths tracked is optimal. The Littlewood-Richardson homotopy algorithm is implemented using the path trackers of the software package PHCpack.

math.NA↗

arXiv2009

Sampling algebraic sets in local intrinsic coordinates

Numerical data structures for positive dimensional solution sets of polynomial systems are sets of generic points cut out by random planes of complimentary dimension. We may represent the linear spaces defined by those planes either by explicit linear equations or in parametric form. These descriptions are respectively called extrinsic and intrinsic representations. While intrinsic representations lower the cost of the linear algebra operations, we observe worse condition numbers. In this paper we describe the local adaptation of intrinsic coordinates to improve the numerical conditioning of sampling algebraic sets. Local intrinsic coordinates also lead to a better stepsize control. We illustrate our results with Maple experiments and computations with PHCpack on some benchmark polynomial systems.

math.NA↗

arXiv2008

Polyhedral Methods in Numerical Algebraic Geometry

In numerical algebraic geometry witness sets are numerical representations of positive dimensional solution sets of polynomial systems. Considering the asymptotics of witness sets we propose certificates for algebraic curves. These certificates are the leading terms of a Puiseux series expansion of the curve starting at infinity. The vector of powers of the first term in the series is a tropism. For proper algebraic curves, we relate the computation of tropisms to the calculation of mixed volumes. With this relationship, the computation of tropisms and Puiseux series expansions could be used as a preprocessing stage prior to a more expensive witness set computation. Systems with few monomials have fewer isolated solutions and fewer data are needed to represent their positive dimensional solution sets.

math.NA↗

arXiv2008

Sweeping Algebraic Curves for Singular Solutions

Many problems give rise to polynomial systems. These systems often have several parameters and we are interested to study how the solutions vary when we change the values for the parameters. Using predictor-corrector methods we track the solution paths. A point along a solution path is critical when the Jacobian matrix is rank deficient. The simplest case of quadratic turning points is well understood, but these methods no longer work for general types of singularities. In order not to miss any singular solutions along a path we propose to monitor the determinant of the Jacobian matrix. We examine the operation range of deflation and relate the effectiveness of deflation to the winding number. Computational experiments on systems coming from different application fields are presented.

math.NA↗

arXiv2008

Tropical Algebraic Geometry in Maple, a preprocessing algorithm for finding common factors to multivariate polynomials with approximate coefficients

Finding a common factor of two multivariate polynomials with approximate coefficients is a problem in symbolic-numeric computing. Taking a tropical view on this problem leads to efficient preprocessing techniques, applying polyhedral methods on the exact exponents with numerical techniques on the approximate coefficients. With Maple we will illustrate our use of tropical algebraic geometry.

math.AG↗

arXiv2007

Higher-Order Deflation for Polynomial Systems with Isolated Singular Solutions

Given an approximation to a multiple isolated solution of a polynomial system of equations, we have provided a symbolic-numeric deflation algorithm to restore the quadratic convergence of Newton's method. Using first-order derivatives of the polynomials in the system, our method creates an augmented system of equations which has the multiple isolated solution of the original system as a regular root. In this paper we consider two approaches to computing the ``multiplicity structure'' at a singular isolated solution. An idea coming from one of them gives rise to our new higher-order deflation method. Using higher-order partial derivatives of the original polynomials, the new algorithm reduces the multiplicity faster than our first method for systems which require several first-order deflation steps. We also present an algorithm to predict the order of the deflation.

math.NA↗

arXiv2005

Decomposing Solution Sets of Polynomial Systems: A New Parallel Monodromy Breakup Algorithm

We consider the numerical irreducible decomposition of a positive dimensional solution set of a polynomial system into irreducible factors. Path tracking techniques computing loops around singularities connect points on the same irreducible components. The computation of a linear trace for each factor certifies the decomposition. This factorization method exhibits a good practical performance on solution sets of relative high degrees. Using the same concepts of monodromy and linear trace, we present a new monodromy breakup algorithm. It shows a better performance than the old method which requires construction of permutations of witness points in order to break up the solution set. In contrast, the new algorithm assumes a finer approach allowing us to avoid tracking unnecessary homotopy paths. As we designed the serial algorithm keeping in mind distributed computing, an additional advantage is that its parallel version can be easily built. Synchronization issues resulted in a performance loss of the straightforward parallel version of the old algorithm. Our parallel implementation of the new approach bypasses these issues, therefore, exhibiting a better performance, especially on solution sets of larger degree.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2005

Solving Polynomial Systems Equation by Equation

By a numerical continuation method called a diagonal homotopy we can compute the intersection of two positive dimensional solution sets of polynomial systems. This paper proposes to use this diagonal homotopy as the key step in a procedure to intersect general solution sets. Of particular interest is the special case where one of the sets is defined by a single polynomial equation. This leads to an algorithm for finding a numerical representation of the solution set of a system of polynomial equations introducing the equations one-by-one. Preliminary computational experiments show this approach can exploit the special structure of a polynomial system, which improves the performance of the path following algorithms.

math.NA↗

arXiv2004

Newton's method with deflation for isolated singularities of polynomial systems

We present a modification of Newton's method to restore quadratic convergence for isolated singular solutions of polynomial systems. Our method is symbolic-numeric: we produce a new polynomial system which has the original multiple solution as a regular root. Using standard bases, a tool for the symbolic computation of multiplicities, we show that the number of deflation stages is bounded by the multiplicity of the isolated root. Our implementation performs well on a large class of applications.

math.NA↗

arXiv2004

Computing Feedback Laws for Linear Systems with a Parallel Pieri Homotopy

Homotopy methods to solve polynomial systems are well suited for parallel computing because the solution paths defined by the homotopy can be tracked independently. Both the static and dynamic load balancing models are implemented in C with MPI, adapting PHCpack written in Ada using gcc, and tested on academic benchmarks and mechanical applications. We studied the parallelization of Pieri homotopies to compute all feedback laws to control linear systems. To distribute the workload, we mapped the poset onto a tree. As the dimensions of the Pieri homotopies grow incrementally from the root to the leaves in the tree, we found the Pieri homotopies well suited for parallel computing.

math.NA↗

arXiv2004

An intrinsic homotopy for intersecting algebraic varieties

Recently we developed a diagonal homotopy method to compute a numerical representation of all positive dimensional components in the intersection of two irreducible algebraic sets. In this paper, we rewrite this diagonal homotopy in intrinsic coordinates, which reduces the number of variables, typically in half. This has the potential to save a significant amount of computation, especially in the iterative solving portion of the homotopy path tracker. There numerical experiments all show a speedup of about a factor two.

math.NA↗

arXiv2003

Computing Dynamic Output Feedback Laws

The pole placement problem asks to find laws to feed the output of a plant governed by a linear system of differential equations back to the input of the plant so that the resulting closed-loop system has a desired set of eigenvalues. Converting this problem into a question of enumerative geometry, efficient numerical homotopy algorithms to solve this problem for general Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) systems have been proposed recently. While dynamic feedback laws offer a wider range of use, the realization of the output of the numerical homotopies as a machine to control the plant in the time domain has not been addressed before. In this paper we present symbolic-numeric algorithms to turn the solution to the question of enumerative geometry into a useful control feedback machine. We report on numerical experiments with our publicly available software and illustrate its application on various control problems from the literature.

math.OC↗

arXiv1999

Polynomial Homotopies for Dense, Sparse and Determinantal Systems

Numerical homotopy continuation methods for three classes of polynomial systems are presented. For a generic instance of the class, every path leads to a solution and the homotopy is optimal. The counting of the roots mirrors the resolution of a generic system that is used to start up the deformations. Software and applications are discussed.

math.NA↗

arXiv1999

Numerical homotopies to compute generic points on positive dimensional algebraic sets

Many applications modeled by polynomial systems have positive dimensional solution components (e.g., the path synthesis problems for four-bar mechanisms) that are challenging to compute numerically by homotopy continuation methods. A procedure of A. Sommese and C. Wampler consists in slicing the components with linear subspaces in general position to obtain generic points of the components as the isolated solutions of an auxiliary system. Since this requires the solution of a number of larger overdetermined systems, the procedure is computationally expensive and also wasteful because many solution paths diverge. In this article an embedding of the original polynomial system is presented, which leads to a sequence of homotopies, with solution paths leading to generic points of all components as the isolated solutions of an auxiliary system. The new procedure significantly reduces the number of paths to solutions that need to be followed. This approach has been implemented and applied to various polynomial systems, such as the cyclic n-roots problem.

math.AG↗