Numerical computation of Galois groups

As Jordan observed in 1870, just as univariate polynomials have Galois groups, so do problems in enumerative geometry. Despite this pedigree, the study of Galois groups in enumerative geometry was dormant for a century, with a systematic study only occuring in the past 15 years. We discuss the current directions of this study, including open problems and conjectures.

Galois/monodromy groups attached to parametric systems of polynomial equations provide a method for detecting the existence of symmetries in solution sets. Beyond the question of existence, one would like to compute formulas for these symmetries, towards the eventual goal of solving the systems more efficiently. We describe and implement one possible approach to this task using numerical homotopy continuation and multivariate rational function interpolation. We describe addit...

Computational Galois theory, in particular the problem of computing the Galois group of a given polynomial is a very old problem. Currently, the best algorithmic solution is Stauduhar's method. Computationally, one of the key challenges in the application of Stauduhar's method is to find, for a given pair of groups H<G a G-relative H-invariant, that is a multivariate polynomial F that is H-invariant, but not G-invariant. While generic, theoretical methods are known to find su...

We report on an implementation of Galois groups in the new computer algebra system OSCAR. As an application we compute Galois groups of Ehrhart polynomials of lattice polytope

We address two interrelated problems concerning permutation of roots of univariate polynomials whose coefficients depend on parameters. First, we compute the Galois group of polynomials $\varphi(x)\in\mathbb{C}[t_1,\cdots,t_k][x]$ over $\mathbb{C}(t_1,\cdots,t_k)$. Provided that the corresponding multivariate polynomial $\varphi(x,t_1,\cdots,t_k)$ is generic with respect to its support $A\subset \mathbb{Z}^{k+1}$, we determine the latter Galois group for any $A$. Second, we d...

Fix a degree $d$ projective curve $X \subset \mathbb{P}^r$ over an algebraically closed field $K$. Let $U \subset (\mathbb{P}^r)^*$ be a dense open subvariety such that every hyperplane $H \in U$ intersects $X$ in $d$ smooth points. Varying $H \in U$ produces the monodromy action $\varphi: \pi_1^{\text{\'et}}(U) \to S_d$. Let $G_X := \mathrm{im}(\varphi)$. The permutation group $G_X$ is called the sectional monodromy group of $X$. In characteristic zero $G_X$ is always the fu...

The development of computational techniques in the last decade has made possible to attack some classical problems of algebraic geometry. In this survey, we briefly describe some open problems related to algebraic curves which can be approached from a computational viewpoint.

We present a family of algorithms for computing the Galois group of a polynomial defined over a $p$-adic field. Apart from the "naive" algorithm, these are the first general algorithms for this task. As an application, we compute the Galois groups of all totally ramified extensions of $\mathbb{Q}_2$ of degrees 18, 20 and 22, tables of which are available online.

Numerical homotopy continuation of solutions to polynomial equations is the foundation for numerical algebraic geometry, whose development has been driven by applications of mathematics. We use numerical homotopy continuation to investigate the problem in pure mathematics of determining Galois groups in the Schubert calculus. For example, we show by direct computation that the Galois group of the Schubert problem of 3-planes in C^8 meeting 15 fixed 5-planes non-trivially is t...

The Galois group of a parameterized polynomial system of equations encodes the structure of the solutions. This monodromy group acts on the set of solutions for a general set of parameters, that is, on the fiber of a projection from the incidence variety of parameters and solutions onto the space of parameters. When this projection is decomposable, the Galois group is imprimitive, and we show that the structure can be exploited for computational improvements. Furthermore, we ...