Description
Title: Counting Zeros of Multivariate Laurent Polynomials and Mixed Volumes of Polytopes
Abstract. A result of D.N. Bernstein proved in the late seventies gives an upper bound
on the number of common solutions of n multivariate Laurent polynomials in
n indeterminates in terms of the mixed volumes of their Newton polytopes.
This bound refines the classical Bezout's bound. Bernstein's Theorem has several
proofs using techniques from numerical analysis, intersection theory and tori varieties.
B. Teissier proved the theorem using intersection theory. A proof using theory of toric
varieties can be found in the book by W. Fulton on the same subject.
In this talk, I will outline an algebraic proof similar to the standard proof of Bezout's Theorem.
This proof, found in collaboration with N.V. Trung, uses basic results about Hilbert functions
of multigraded algebras first proved by van der Waerden.