Shellable slices of hyperbolic polynomials and the degree principle

Abstract: We study a natural stratification of certain affine slices of univariate hyperbolic polynomials. We look into which posets of strata can be realized and show that the dual of the poset of strata is a shellable simplicial complex and in particular a combinatorial sphere. From this we obtain a g-theorem and an upper bound theorem on the number of strata. We use these results to design smaller test sets to improve upon Timofte's degree principle and give bounds on how much the degree principle can be improved.