Recent Advances in Real Complexity and Computation

Book excerpt: This volume is composed of six contributions derived from the lectures given during the UIMP-RSME Lluis Santalo Summer School on ``Recent Advances in Real Complexity and Computation'', held July 16-20, 2012, in Santander, Spain. The goal of this Summer School was to present some of the recent advances on Smale's 17th Problem: ``Can a zero of $n$ complex polynomial equations in $n$ unknowns be found approximately, on the average, in polynomial time with a uniform algorithm?'' These papers cover several aspects of this problem: from numerical to symbolic methods in polynomial equation solving, computational complexity aspects (both worse and average cases and both upper and lower complexity bounds) as well as aspects of the underlying geometry of the problem. Some of the contributions also deal with either real or multiple solutions solving.