Birational aspects of the geometry of varieties of sums of powers (Q392961)

Given a homogeneous polynomial \(F\in k[x_0,\ldots , x_n]\) of degree \(d\), and a positive integer number \(h\), one can consider the set \(\mathrm{VSP}(F,h)^{\circ}\) of the additive decompositions of \(F\) as a sum of \(h\) powers of linear forms. This set can be interpreted in a natural way as a subset of the Hilbert scheme \(\mathrm{Hilb}_h((\mathbb P^n)^*)\), and its closure \(\mathrm{VSP}(F,h)\) is called the variety of sums of powers of \(F\). This point of view has brought to many important results, see for instance the survey [\textit{I. V. Dolgachev}, Milan J. Math. 72, 163--187 (2004; Zbl 1222.14116)]. Here the authors introduce a different compactification of \(\mathrm{VSP}(F,h)^{\circ}\), i.e. they associate to a general additive decomposition \(F=L_1^d+\dots+L_h^d\) the linear span of the \(h\) points \(L_1^d,\ldots L_h^d\) of the Veronese variety \(V_{d,n}\subset \mathbb P^N=\mathbb P(k[x_0,\ldots,x_n]_d)\). This gives a map to the Grassmannian \(\mathbb G(h-1, N)\) and a new compactification \(\mathrm{VSP}_G(F,h)\), defined only if \(h<N-n\), but birational to the previous one. Taking advantage from the theory of the secant varieties and using a clever induction on the degree \(d\), the authors prove some general results on the birational nature of the varieties of sums of powers. In the case \(d=2\), for \(F\) general, all the irreducible components of \(\mathrm{VSP}(F,h)\) are unirational for any \(h\) and rational for \(h=n+1\). For any \(d\), they prove that the irreducible components of \(\mathrm{VSP}(F,h)\) for \(F\) general are rationally connected if \(h\geq {{{{n+d}\choose{n}}-1}\over{k+1}}\), where \(k\) is such that \(0<k<n\) and \({{{n+d}\choose{n}}-1}\over{k+1}\) is integer.