Secant non-defectivity via collisions of fat points (Q2089640)

The secant variety of a projective variety is called defective if its dimension is equal to its postulated expected dimension. The classificiation of secant varieties has received particular attention for three special varieties, the Segre, Veronese, and Segre-Veronese varieties. The defectiveness of the Veronese variety has been classified by the famous Alexander-Hirschowitz Theorem [\textit{J. Alexander} and \textit{A. Hirschowitz}, J. Algebr. Geom. 4, No. 2, 201--222 (1995; Zbl 0829.14002)]. For the Segre and the Segre-Veronese varieties several defective examples have been found, but a complete classification is still missing. The authors in this work focus on the Segre-Veronese variety on two factors with bi-degree \((a,b)\in\{(3,3),(3,4)(4,4)\}\). The reason is that \textit{H. Abo} and \textit{M. C. Brambilla} [Ann. Mat. Pura Appl. (4) 192, No. 1, 61--92 (2013; Zbl 1262.14065)] proved that as long those cases are non-defective, then the secant varieties of the Segre-Veronese variety with bi-degree \((a,b)\), \(a, b\geq 3\) are also non-defective. Understanding the dimension of those secant varieties can be translated in terms of dimensions of linear systems. The authors employed a degeneration technique introduced in [\textit{L. Evain}, C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I, Math. 325, No. 12, 1305--1308 (1997; Zbl 0905.14005)], where the base points are specialized to a special position, and also allowed to collide together. In such a manner, they are able to prove that the Segre-Veronese variety with bi-degree \((a,b)\in\{(3,3),(3,4),(4,4)\}\) is non-defective, completing the case \(a,b\geq 3\). Moreover, their result leads to the identifiability of the subgeneric minimal decompositions.