On Lazard's Valuation and CAD Construction

Abstract

In 1990 Lazard proposed an improved projection operation for cylindrical algebraic decomposition (CAD). For the proof he introduced a certain notion of valuation of a multivariate Puiseux series at a point. However a gap in one of the key supporting results for the improved projection was subsequently noticed. In this report we study a more limited but rigorous concept of Lazard's valuation: namely, we study Lazard's valuation of a multivariate polynomial at a point. We prove some basic properties of the limited Lazard valuation and identify some relationships between valuation-invariance and order-invariance.