We draw a new connection between Coppersmith's method for finding small solutions to polynomial congruences modulo integers and the capacity theory of adelic subsets of algebraic curves. Coppersmith's method uses lattice basis reduction to construct an auxiliary polynomial that vanishes at the desired solutions. Capacity theory provides a toolkit for proving when polynomials with certain boundedness properties do or do not exist. Using capacity theory, we prove that Coppersmith's bound for univariate polynomials is optimal in the sense that there are auxiliary polynomials of the type he used that would allow finding roots of size @math for monic degree- @math polynomials modulo @math . Our results rule out the existence of polynomials of any degree and do not rely on lattice algorithms, thus eliminating the possibility of even superpolynomial-time improvements to Coppersmith's bound. We extend this result to constructions of auxiliary polynomials using binomial polynomials, and rule out the existence of any auxiliary polynomial of this form that would find solutions of size @math unless @math has a very small prime factor.
We show how to find sufficiently small integer solutions to a polynomial in a single variable modulo N, and to a polynomial in two variables over the integers. The methods sometimes extend to more variables. As applications: RSA encryption with exponent 3 is vulnerable if the opponent knows two-thirds of the message, or if two messages agree over eight-ninths of their length; and we can find the factors of N=PQ if we are given the high order @math bits of P.