Fast High-Resolution Drawing of Algebraic Curves

Abstract

We address the problem of computing a drawing of high resolution of a plane curve defined by a bivariate polynomial equation P(x,y)=0. Given a grid of fixed resolution, a drawing is a subset of pixels. Our goal is to compute an approximate drawing that (i) contains all the parts of the curve that intersect the pixel edges, (ii) excludes a pixel when the evaluation of P with interval arithmetic on each of its four edges is far from zero. One of the challenges for computing drawings on a high-resolution grid is to minimize the complexity due to the evaluation of the input polynomial. Most state-of-the-art approaches focus on bounding the number of independent evaluations. Using state-of-the-art Computer Algebra techniques, we design new algorithms that amortize the evaluations and improve the complexity for computing such drawings. Our main contribution is to use a non-uniform grid based on the Chebyshev nodes to take advantage of multipoint evaluation techniques via the Discrete Cosine Transform. We propose two new algorithms that compute drawings and compare them experimentally on several classes of high degree polynomials. Notably, one of those approaches is faster than state-of-the-art drawing software.