Pollard's rho algorithm is a special-purpose integer factorization algorithm. It was invented by John Pollard in 1975. It is particularly effective at splitting composite numbers with small factors.

Core ideas

The rho algorithm is based on Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm and on the observation that (as in the birthday problem) two numbers x and y are congruent modulo p with probability 0.5 after numbers have been randomly chosen. If p is a factor of n, the integer we are aiming to factor, then since p divides both and .

The rho algorithm therefore uses a function modulo n as a generator of a pseudo-random sequence. It runs one sequence twice as "fast" as the other; i.e. for every iteration made by one copy of the sequence, the other copy makes two iterations. Let x be the current state of one sequence and y be the current state of the other. The GCD of |x − y| and n is taken at each step. If this GCD ever comes to n, then the algorithm terminates with failure, since this means x = y and therefore, by Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm, the sequence has cycled and continuing any further would only be repeating previous work.

Algorithm

Inputs: n, the integer to be factored; and f(x), a pseudo-random function modulo n

Output: a non-trivial factor of n, or failure.

1. x ← 2, y ← 2; d ← 1
2. While d = 1:
   1. x ← f(x)
   2. y ← f(f(y))
   3. d ← GCD(|x − y|, n)
3. If d = n, return failure.
4. Else, return d.

Note that this algorithm may not find the factors and will return failure for composite n. In that case, use a different f(x) and try again. Note, as well, that this algorithm does not work when n is a prime number, since, in this case, d will be always 1. The algorithm is so-called because the values of f enter a period (mod d), resulting in a ρ shape when diagrammed.

Variants

In 1980, Richard Brent published a faster variant of the rho algorithm. He used the same core ideas as Pollard but a different method of cycle detection, replacing Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm with the related Brent's cycle finding method.

A further improvement was made by Pollard and Brent. They observed that if , then also for any positive integer b. In particular, instead of computing at every step, it suffices to define z as the product of 100 consecutive terms modulo n, and then compute a single . A major speed up results as 100 gcd steps are replaced with 99 multiplications modulo n and a single gcd. Occasionally it may cause the algorithm to fail by introducing a repeated factor, for instance when n is a square. But it then suffices to go back to the previous gcd term, where , and use the regular Rho algorithm from there.

Application

The algorithm is very fast for numbers with small factors. For example, on a 3 GHz workstation, the original rho algorithm found the factor 274177 of the sixth Fermat number (18446744073709551617) in 26 milliseconds; the Richard Brent variant found the same factor in 5 milliseconds. However, for a semiprime of the same size (10023859281455311421), the same workstation using the original rho algorithm took 109 milliseconds to find a factor; the Richard Brent variant took 31 milliseconds.

For f, we choose a polynomial with integer coefficients. The most common ones are of the form:

The rho algorithm's most remarkable success has been the factorization of the eighth Fermat number by Pollard and Brent. They used Brent's variant of the algorithm, which found a previously unknown prime factor. The complete factorization of F₈ took, in total, 2 hours on a UNIVAC 1100/42.

Example factorization

Let n = 8051 and f(x) = (x² + 1 ) mod 8051.

97 is a non-trivial factor of 8051. Other values of c may give the cofactor (83) instead of 97.

Complexity

The algorithm offers a trade-off between its running time and the probability that it finds a factor. If n is a product of two distinct primes of equal length, running the algorithm for O(n^1/4 polylog(n)) steps yields a factor with probability roughly half.^{[citation needed]} (Note that this is a heuristic claim, and rigorous analysis of the algorithm remains open.)

References

• Brent, Richard P. (1980), "An Improved Monte Carlo Factorization Algorithm", BIT 20: 176–184, http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~brent/pd/rpb051i.pdf 
• Cormen, Thomas H.; Leiserson, Charles E.; Rivest, Ronald L. & Stein, Clifford (2001), "Section 31.9: Integer factorization", Introduction to Algorithms (Second ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 896–901, ISBN 0262032937  (this section discusses only Pollard's rho algorithm).
• Pollard, J. M. (1975), "A Monte Carlo method for factorization", BIT Numerical Mathematics 15 (3): 331–334 

External links

• Weisstein, Eric W., "Pollard rho Factorization Method" from MathWorld.
• Java Implementation