On the ideals of secant varieties to certain rational varieties (Q2425422)

The authors study the Segre embedding \(\mathbb X\) of a product \(\mathbb P^{n_1}\times\cdots\times \mathbb P^{n_t}\) into \(\mathbb P^N\), \(N=\prod (n_i+1)-1\). The target is to determine the dimension and a set of defining equations for the ideal of secant varieties to \(\mathbb X\). A standard method for finding some equations is the ``flattening'' procedure: the Segre embedding is factored through an embedding \[ \mathbb P^{n_1}\times\cdots\times \mathbb P^{n_t}\to \mathbb P^a\times\mathbb P^b\to \mathbb P^N \] given by any partition of \(t\). As the equations for the secant varieties of the embedding \(\mathbb Y\) of \(\mathbb P^a\times\mathbb P^b\) into \(\mathbb P^N\) are classically known, a partial set of equations for the secant varieties of \(\mathbb X\) follows. It has been conjectured that collecting these equations, for the various partitions, should provide a set of generators for the ideal. The authors assume that the product is highly unbalanced, i.e. \(n_1\geq N-\sum_{i=2}^t n_i+1\). Under this hypothesis, a complete description of the dimension of the secant varieties of \(\mathbb X\) is provided. Then, in this unbalanced case, taking the partition \(\{n_1 | \;n_2,\dots, n_t\}\), the authors prove that, for some values of \(s\), the \(s\)-th secant varieties of \(\mathbb X\) and \(\mathbb Y\) coincide. As a consequence, it follows that in these cases, a set of generators for the ideals of the secant varieties is provided by a single flattening.