Varieties with quadratic entry locus. I (Q1024192)

Let \(X\subset \mathbb P ^N\) be an irreducible non-degenerate variety of dimension \(n\). The secant defect \(\delta (X)=2n+1-\dim (SX)\) is the difference between the expected and the effective dimensions of the secant variety \(SX\subset \mathbb P ^N\). A quadratic entry locus manifold or QEL-manifold (resp. a LQEL-manifold) of type \(\delta\) is a smooth variety \(X\subset \mathbb P ^N\) such that for general \(p\in SX\), the entry locus \(\Sigma _p\subset X\) (given by the points on \(X\) spanning a secant line through \(p\)) is a smooth quadric hypersurface (resp. the union of smooth quadric hypersurfaces) of dimension \(\delta =\delta (X)\) whose linear span is \(\mathbb P ^N\). When \(\delta =0\) and \(N>2n+1\), the above conditions do not impose geometric restrictions on \(X\), but a QEL-manifold with \(\delta =0\) and \(N=2n+1\) is linearly normal and rational and a QEL-manifold with \(\delta >0\) is rational. The paper under review studies LQEL-manifolds with \(\delta \geq 1\) via the modern tools of deformation theory of rational curves. For general \(x\in X\), the subvarieties \(Y_x\subset \mathbb P (T_{x,X}^*)\) of lines through \(x\) are particularly important. It is shown that for LQEL-manifolds with \(\delta \geq 3\), the variety \(Y_x\subset \mathbb P ^{n-1}\) is a QEL manifold of type \(\delta -2\) with \(SY_x=\mathbb P ^{n-1}\). So, if one lets \(r_X=sup \{r>0|\delta \geq 2r+1 \}\), then one can inductively define QEL-manifolds \(X^0=X\) and \(X^k=Y_x(X^{k-1})\) for \(k=1,\dots , r_X-1\) of type \(\delta (X^k)=\delta -2k \geq 3\). As a consequence it is shown (amongst other strong restrictions) that \(2^{r_X}\) divides \(n-\delta\). One application is the complete classification of LQEL-manifolds of type \(\delta\) with \(n/2<\delta <n\) (there are only five cases) and of type \(\delta=n/2\) (there are 9 possibilities). Restrictions on the existence of special Cremona transforms \(\phi :\mathbb P ^N\dasharrow \mathbb P ^N\) of type \((2,d)\) (in terms of the base loci) are also obtained. In particular those of type \((2,3)\), \((2,5)\) are completely classified as well as all special Cremona transformations of \(\mathbb P ^{2n+1}\) where \(n\) is the dimension of the base locus.