English

Faster Deterministic Integer Root Finding for Integer Polynomials

Number Theory 2026-08-01 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms Symbolic Computation

Abstract

We give a deterministic algorithm for finding all integer roots of a square-free polynomial fZ[x]f\in\mathbb Z[x] of degree nn with f<2b\lVert f\rVert_\infty<2^b. The running time is O~(n3/2b), \tilde{O}(n^{3/2}b), improving the O~(n2b)\tilde{O}(n^2b) bound of Harvey and Hittmeir (Research in Number Theory, 2022). The algorithm follows the classical pp-adic framework: find roots modulo a prime pp, lift them modulo a high power of pp, and verify the lifted candidates. The main new idea is to avoid searching for a prime for which fmodpf\bmod p is square-free. Instead, we find a prime for which the total multiplicity of repeated roots modulo pp is small. This requires lifting repeated roots, which we handle using a weighted lifting tree. We also give a faster deterministic candidate-verification algorithm: given nn candidate integers smaller in absolute value than 2b2^b, we decide which are roots of ff in O~(nb+min(n2,nb2)) \tilde{O}(nb+\min(n^2,nb^2)) bit operations. Together, these ingredients give the first deterministic subquadratic-in-nn improvement for integer root finding in the square-free case.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.00668,
  title  = {Faster Deterministic Integer Root Finding for Integer Polynomials},
  author = {Itamar Nir},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.00668},
  year   = {2026}
}