The BKK theorem states that the mixed volume of the Newton polytopes of a system of polynomial equations upper bounds the number of isolated torus solutions of the system. Homotopy continuation solvers make use of this fact to pick efficient start systems. For systems where the mixed volume bound is not attained, such methods are still tracking more paths than necessary. We propose a strategy of improvement by lifting a system to an equivalent system with a strictly lower mixed volume at the expense of more variables. We illustrate this idea providing lifting constructions for arbitrary bivariate systems and certain dense-enough systems.
We study the locus of the liftings of a homogeneous ideal $H$ in a polynomial ring over any field. We prove that this locus can be endowed with a structure of scheme $mathrm L_H$ by applying the constructive methods of Grobner bases, for any given term order. Indeed, this structure does not depend on the term order, since it can be defined as the scheme representing the functor of liftings of $H$. We also provide an explicit isomorphism between the schemes corresponding to two different term orders. Our approach allows to embed $mathrm L_H$ in a Hilbert scheme as a locally closed subscheme, and, over an infinite field, leads to find interesting topological properties, as for instance that $mathrm L_H$ is connected and that its locus of radical liftings is open. Moreover, we show that every ideal defining an arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay scheme of codimension two has a radical lifting, giving in particular an answer to an open question posed by L. G. Roberts in 1989.
Regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties are subvarieties of the flag variety $mathrm{Flag}(mathbb{C}^n)$ arising naturally in the intersection of geometry, representation theory, and combinatorics. Recent results of Abe-Horiguchi-Masuda-Murai-Sato and Abe-DeDieu-Galetto-Harada relate the volume polynomials of regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties to the volume polynomial of the Gelfand-Zetlin polytope $mathrm{GZ}(lambda)$ for $lambda=(lambda_1,lambda_2,ldots,lambda_n)$. The main results of this manuscript use and generalize tools developed by Anderson-Tymoczko, Kiritchenko-Smirnov-Timorin, and Postnikov, in order to derive an explicit formula for the volume polynomials of regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties in terms of the volumes of certain faces of the Gelfand-Zetlin polytope, and also exhibit a manifestly positive, combinatorial formula for their coefficients with respect to the basis of monomials in the $alpha_i := lambda_i-lambda_{i+1}$. In addition, motivated by these considerations, we carefully analyze the special case of the permutohedral variety, which is also known as the toric variety associated to Weyl chambers. In this case, we obtain an explicit decomposition of the permutohedron (the moment map image of the permutohedral variety) into combinatorial $(n-1)$-cubes, and also give a geometric interpretation of this decomposition by expressing the cohomology class of the permutohedral variety in $mathrm{Flag}(mathbb{C}^n)$ as a sum of the cohomology classes of a certain set of Richardson varieties.
The Macaulay2 package DecomposableSparseSystems implements methods for studying and numerically solving decomposable sparse polynomial systems. We describe the structure of decomposable sparse systems and explain how the methods in this package may be used to exploit this structure, with examples.
A classical approach to investigate a closed projective scheme $W$ consists of considering a general hyperplane section of $W$, which inherits many properties of $W$. The inverse problem that consists in finding a scheme $W$ starting from a possible hyperplane section $Y$ is called a {em lifting problem}, and every such scheme $W$ is called a {em lifting} of $Y$. Investigations in this topic can produce methods to obtain schemes with specific properties. For example, any smooth point for $Y$ is smooth also for $W$. We characterize all the liftings of $Y$ with a given Hilbert polynomial by a parameter scheme that is obtained by gluing suitable affine open subschemes in a Hilbert scheme and is described through the functor it represents. We use constructive methods from Grobner and marked bases theories. Furthermore, by classical tools we obtain an analogous result for equidimensional liftings. Examples of explicit computations are provided.
We consider the problem of computing homogeneous coordinates of points in a zero-dimensional subscheme of a compact, complex toric variety $X$. Our starting point is a homogeneous ideal $I$ in the Cox ring of $X$, which in practice might arise from homogenizing a sparse polynomial system. We prove a new eigenvalue theorem in the toric compact setting, which leads to a novel, robust numerical approach for solving this problem. Our method works in particular for systems having isolated solutions with arbitrary multiplicities. It depends on the multigraded regularity properties of $I$. We study these properties and provide bounds on the size of the matrices involved in our approach in the case where $I$ is a complete intersection.