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A Near-Optimal Algorithm for Computing Real Roots of Sparse Polynomials

Let $p\in\mathbb{Z}[x]$ be an arbitrary polynomial of degree $n$ with $k$ non-zero integer coefficients of absolute value less than $2^τ$. In this paper, we answer the open question whether the real roots of $p$ can be computed with a number of arithmetic operations over the rational numbers that is polynomial in the input size of the sparse representation of $p$. More precisely, we give a deterministic, complete, and certified algorithm that determines isolating intervals for all real roots of $p$ with $O(k^3\cdot\log(nτ)\cdot \log n)$ many exact arithmetic operations over the rational numbers. When using approximate but certified arithmetic, the bit complexity of our algorithm is bounded by $\tilde{O}(k^4\cdot nτ)$, where $\tilde{O}(\cdot)$ means that we ignore logarithmic. Hence, for sufficiently sparse polynomials (i.e. $k=O(\log^c (nτ))$ for a positive constant $c$), the bit complexity is $\tilde{O}(nτ)$. We also prove that the latter bound is optimal up to logarithmic factors.