Factoring with Hints

We introduce a new deterministic factoring algorithm, which could be described in the cryptographically fashionable term of "factoring with hints": we show that, given the knowledge of the factorisations of $O(N^{1/3+\epsilon})$ terms surrounding $N=pq$ product of two large primes, we can recover deterministically $p$ and $q$ in $O(N^{1/3+\epsilon})$ bit operations. Although this is slower than the current best factoring algorithms, this method shows that the factorisations of close integers are related and that consequently one can expect more results along this line of thought.