Real root isolation for exact and approximate polynomials using Descartes' rule of signs

Collins und Akritas (1976) have described the Descartes method for isolating the real roots of an integer polynomial in one variable. This method recursively subdivides an initial interval until Descartes’ Rule of Signs indicates that all roots have been isolated. The partial converse of Descartes’ Rule by Obreshkoff (1952) in conjunction with the bound of Mahler (1964) and Davenport (1985) leads us to an asymptotically almost tight bound for the resulting subdivision tree. It implies directly the best known complexity bounds for the equivalent forms of the Descartes method in the power basis (Collins/Akritas, 1976), the Bernstein basis (Lane/Riesenfeld, 1981) and the scaled Bernstein basis (Johnson, 1991), which are presented here in a unified fashion. Without losing correctness of the output, we modify the Descartes method such that it can handle bitstream coefficients, which can be approximated arbitrarily well but cannot be determined exactly. We analyze the computing time and precision requirements. The method described elsewhere by the author together with Kerber/Wolpert (2007) and Kerber (2008) to determine the arrangement of plane algebraic curves rests in an essential way on variants of the bitstream Descartes algorithm; we analyze a central part of it. This thesis is written in English.