Algebraic number fields and the LLL algorithm

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the computational costs of various operations and algorithms in algebraic number fields using exact arithmetic. Let K be an algebraic number field. In the first half of the paper, we calculate the running time and the size of the output of many operations in K in terms of the size of the input and the parameters of K. We include some earlier results about these, but we go further than them, e.g. we also analyze some R-specific operations in K like less-than comparison.In the second half of the paper, we analyze two algorithms: the Bareiss algorithm, which is an integer-preserving version of the Gaussian elimination, and the LLL algorithm, which is for lattice basis reduction. In both cases, we extend the algorithm from Zn to Kn, and give a polynomial upper bound on the running time when the computations in K are performed exactly (as opposed to floating-point approximations).