Computing with polynomials given byblack boxes for their evaluations: Greatest common divisors, factorization, separation of numerators and denominators

Algorithms are developed that adopt a novel implicit representation for multivariate polynomials and rational functions with rational coefficients, that of black boxes for their evaluation. We show that within this representation the polynomial greatest common divisor and factorization problems, as well as the problem of extracting the numerator and denominator of a rational function, can all be solved in random polynomial-time. Since we can convert black boxes efficiently to sparse format, problems with sparse solutions, e.g., sparse polynomial factorization and sparse multivariate rational function interpolation, are also in random polynomial time. Moreover, the black box representation is one of the most space efficient implicit representations that we know. Therefore, the output programs can be easily distributed over a network of processors for further manipulation, such as sparse interpolation. © 1990, Academic Press Limited. All rights reserved.