On secant varieties of compact Hermitian symmetric spaces (Q1030698)

When \(X \subset \mathbb P^n\) is a projective variety whose homogeneous ideal is generated by quadrics, the minimal degree for generators of the ideal of \(\sigma ( X )\) (the secant variety of \(X\)) is 3. When \(X\) is a homogeneous variety (hence its ideal is generated in degree two), in all previously known examples the ideal of \(\sigma (X)\) was generated in degree three. In this paper the case when \(X\) is a compact Hermitian symmetric space in its minimal homogeneous embedding (CHSS for short) is studied, and it is shown that for every CHSS \(X\), the ideal of \(\sigma (X)\) is generated in degree three, with (surprisingly enough) one exception, namely when \(X\) is the spinor variety \(D_7\), whose secant variety is generated in degree four. It is also shown that all CHSS have secant varieties which are normal and with rational singularities. The main tool in proving those results is a theorem by the second author, which relates the vector spaces of minimal generators of the ideal of \(\sigma (X)\) in a given degree with a cohomology space of certain vector bundles associated to particular desingularizations of \(\sigma (X)\).