Monodromy and irreducibility criteria with algorithmic applications in characteristic zero

Abstract

Consider a projective algebraic variety V, which is the set of all common zeros of homogeneous polynomials of degrees less than d in n + 1 variables over a field of characteristic zero. We suggest an algorithm that decides whether two (or more) given points of V belong to the same irreducible component of V. We also show how to construct, for each s < n, an (s + 1)-dimensional plane in the projective space such that the intersection of every irreducible component of dimension n — s of V with the constructed plane is transversal and is an irreducible curve. These algorithms are deterministic and polynomial in dn and the input size. Bibliography: 9 titles.