Higher secant varieties of the Segre varieties \(\mathbb P^1\times\dots\times\mathbb P^1\) (Q2570681): Difference between revisions

The Segre product of projective spaces represents the subvariety of decomposable tensors in the space of tensors of linear spaces. The secant varieties \(S_2,\dots, S_k\) of these Segre products represent thus tensors \(\tau\) which can be written as sums of \(2,\dots,k\) decomposable tensors. The minimal \(k\) such that \(\tau\) belongs to \(S_k\) is usually known as the rank of the tensor. The authors study the dimension of secant varieties \(S_k\), i.e. the dimension of the variety of tensors of rank \(k\), for the Segre product of many copies of \(\mathbb P^1\), i.e. for tensors defined on a vector space of dimension \(2\). Using methods of differential algebraic geometry (Terracini's lemma and birational equivalence) they show that the dimension of the \(k\)-th secant variety of the product of \(n\) copies of \(\mathbb P^1\) equals the expected value \(\min\{nk+k-1, 2^k-1\}\), except for one value of \(k\) (depending on \(n\)), for which the dimension is still unknown, in general.