On expansion of algebraic functions in power and Puiseux series, I

We present algorithms that (a) reduce an algebraic equation, defining an algebraic function, to a Fuchsian differential equation that this function satisfies; and (b) compute coefficients in the expansions of solutions of linear differential equations in the neighborhood of regular singularities via explicit linear recurrences. This allows us to compute the Nth coefficient (or N coefficients) of an algebraic function of degree d in O(dN) operations with O(d) storage (or O(dN) storage).