Matrices in elimination theory

The last decade has witnessed the rebirth of resultant methods as a powerful computational tool for variable elimination and polynomial system solving. In particular, the advent of sparse elimination theory and toric varieties has provided ways to exploit the structure of polynomials encountered in a number of scientific and engineering applications. On the other hand, the Bezoutian reveals itself as an important tool in many areas connected to elimination theory and has its own merits, leading to new developments in effective algebraic geometry. This survey unifies the existing work on resultants, with emphasis on constructing matrices that generalize the classic matrices named after Sylvester, Bezout and Macaulay. The properties of the different matrix formulations are presented, including some complexity issues, with emphasis on variable elimination theory. We compare toric resultant matrices to Macaulay's matrix and further conjecture the generalization of Macaulay's exact rational expression for the resultant polynomial to the toric case. A new theorem proves that the maximal minor of a Bezout matrix is a non-trivial multiple of the resultant. We discuss applications to constructing monomial bases of quotient rings and multiplication maps, as well as to system solving by linear algebra operations. Lastly, degeneracy issues, a major preoccupation in practice, are examined. Throughout the presentation, examples are used for illustration and open questions are stated in order to point the way to further research. (C) 1999 Academic Press.