An iterative method for calculating approximate GCD of univariate polynomials

We present an iterative algorithm for calculating approximate greatest common divisor (GCD) of univariate polynomials with the real coefficients. For a given pair of polynomials and a degree, our algorithm finds a pair of polynomials which has a GCD of the given degree and whose coefficients are perturbed from those in the original inputs, making the perturbations as small as possible, along with the GCD. The problem of approximate GCD is transfered to a constrained minimization problem, then solved with a so-called modified Newton method, which is a generalization of the gradient-projection method, by searching the solution iteratively. We demonstrate that our algorithm calculates approximate GCD with perturbations as small as those calculated by a method based on the structured total least norm (STLN) method, while our method runs significantly faster than theirs by approximately up to 30 times, compared with their implementation. We also show that our algorithm properly handles some ill-conditioned problems with GCD containing small or large leading coefficient.