Section: Overall Objectives

Presentation

Algorithmic number theory dates back to the dawn of mathematics itself, cf. Eratosthenes's sieve to enumerate consecutive prime numbers. With the arrival of computers, previously unsolvable problems have come into reach, which has boosted the development of more or less practical algorithms for essentially all number theoretic problems. The field is now mature enough for a more computer science driven approach, taking into account the theoretical complexities and practical running times of the algorithms.

Concerning the lower level multiprecision arithmetic, folklore has asserted for a long time that asymptotically fast algorithms such as Schönhage–Strassen multiplication are impractical; nowadays, however, they are used routinely. On a higher level, symbolic computation provides numerous asymptotically fast algorithms (such as for the simultaneous evaluation of a polynomial in many arguments or linear algebra on sparse matrices), which have only partially been exploited in computational number theory. Moreover, precise complexity analyses do not always exist, nor do sound studies to choose between different algorithms (an exponential algorithm may be preferable to a polynomial one for a large range of inputs); folklore cannot be trusted in a fast moving area such as computer science.

Another problem is the reliability of the computations; many number theoretic algorithms err with a small probability, depend on unknown constants or rely on a Riemann hypothesis. The correctness of their output can either be ensured by a special design of the algorithm itself (slowing it down) or by an a posteriori verification. Ideally, the algorithm outputs a certificate, providing an independent fast correctness proof. An example is integer factorisation, where factors are hard to obtain but trivial to check; primality proofs have initiated sophisticated generalisations.

One of the long term goals of the Lfant project team is to make an inventory of the major number theoretic algorithms, with an emphasis on algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry, and to carry out complexity analyses. So far, most of these algorithms have been designed and tested over number fields of small degree and scale badly. A complexity analysis should naturally lead to improvements by identifying bottlenecks, systematically redesigning and incorporating modern asymptotically fast methods.

Reliability of the developed algorithms is a second long term goal of our project team. Short of proving the Riemann hypothesis, this could be achieved through the design of specialised, slower algorithms not relying on any unproven assumptions. We would prefer, however, to augment the fastest unproven algorithms with the creation of independently verifiable certificates. Ideally, it should not take longer to check the certificate than to generate it.

All theoretical results are complemented by concrete reference implementations in Pari/Gp , which allow to determine and tune the thresholds where the asymptotic complexity kicks in and help to evaluate practical performances on problem instances provided by the research community. Another important source for algorithmic problems treated by the Lfant project team is modern cryptology. Indeed, the security of all practically relevant public key cryptosystems relies on the difficulty of some number theoretic problem; on the other hand, implementing the systems and finding secure parameters require efficient algorithmic solutions to number theoretic problems.