Pollard's -Method

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Pollard's

-Method
-method, which we describe in this section. is a positive integer with prime for all . is not -power smooth (it is

Lenstra's discovery of ECM was inspired by Pollard's Definition 6.3 (Power smooth) Let factorization , then is Thus is

be a positive integer. If -power smooth if , but

power smooth for

-power smooth). We will use the following algorithm in both the Pollard and elliptic curve factorization methods. , this

Algorithm 6.3 (Least Common Multiple of First Integers) Given a positive integer algorithm computes the least common multiple of the positive integers up to . 1. [Sieve] Using, e.g., the Sieve of Eratosthenes (Algorithm 1.2.3), compute a list . 2. [Multiply] Compute and output the product Proof. Let . Then .

of all primes

where

is the largest power of .

that satisfies

. Since

, we have

Let

be a positive integer that we wish to factor. We use the Pollard

-method to look for a

nontrivial factor of as follows. First we choose a positive integer , usually with at most six digits. Suppose that there is a prime divisor of such that is -power smooth. We try to find using the following strategy. If is an integer not divisible by then by Theorem 2.1.19,

Let that , so

, and observe that our assumption that

is

-power smooth implies

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Thus

If

also then , then

is a nontrivial factor of for every prime power divisor

. If of . In this case,

repeat the above steps but with a smaller choice of or possibly a different choice of . Also, it is a good idea to check from the start whether or not is not a perfect power , and if so replace by . We formalize the algorithm as follows: Algorithm 6.3 (Pollard Method) Given a positive integer of . (Each prime and a bound , this algorithm

attempts to find a nontrivial factor is -power smooth.)

is likely to have the property that

1. [Compute lcm] Use Algorithm 6.3.2 to compute 2. [Initialize] Set . 3. [Power and gcd] Compute 4. [Finished?] If 5. [Try Again?] If For fixed or , output (say), replace and and terminate. by when .

and go to step 3. Otherwise terminate. is divisible by a prime and such that is are such

, Algorithm 6.3.3 often splits

-power smooth. Approximately 15% of primes that is

in the interval from

power-smooth, so the Pollard method with

already fails nearly 85% of the

time at finding -digit primes in this range (see also Exercise 6.10). We will not analyze Pollard's method further, since it was mentioned here only to set the stage for the elliptic curve factorization method. The following examples illustrate the Pollard -method. . We try to use the Pollard ; taking we have

Example 6.3 In this example, Pollard works perfectly. Let method with to split . We have

and

so

is a factor of

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Example 6.3 In this example, we replace we have

by larger integer. Let

. With

and

and

With

, we have

and

so

is a nontrivial factor of

. by a smaller integer. Let . Suppose , so

Example 6.3 In this example, we replace ,

and Pollard's method works:

, so we do not obtain a factor of

. If we replace

by

and Example 6.3 In this example, so

, so we split

. does. Let . Suppose ,

does not work, but ,

and then Pollard's method works:

, so we do not obtain a factor of

. If we replace

by

and

. Thus

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Next: Motivation for the Elliptic Up: Integer Factorization Using Elliptic Previous: Integer Factorization Using Elliptic Contents Index William 2007-06-01

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