Secants of minuscule and cominuscule minimal orbits (Q2350011)

From the abstract: ``We study the geometry of the secant and tangential variety of a cominuscule and minuscule variety, e.g. a Grassmannian or a spinor variety. Using methods inspired by statistics we provide an explicit local isomorphism with a product of an affine space with a variety which is the Zariski closure of the image of a map defined by generalized determinants.'' [\textit{I. M. Gel'fand} and \textit{V. V. Serganova}, Russian Math. Surveys 42, No. 2, 133--168 (1987; Zbl 0639.14031)], [\textit{S. Fomin} and \textit{A. Zelevinsky}, J. Algebraic Combin. 12, No. 1, 37--57 (2000; Zbl 1056.14054)]. ``In particular, equations of the secant or tangential variety correspond to relations among generalized determinants. We also provide a representation theoretic decomposition of cubics in the ideal of the secant variety of any Grassmannian.'' To get their result they also prove formulas for the generalized determinants for a sum and a generalized Laplace expansion. The ideal of an equivariantly embedded homogeneous variety is always generated by quadrics, but in general, the ideal of its secant variety is not known. Although, it is not true that the ideal of the secant of a homogeneous variety is always generated by cubics, it is expected that this property holds for Grassmannians. They provide an explicit representation theoretic description of cubics in the ideal of the secant variety of any Grassmannian. This part extends the case of \(\mathrm{Gr}(3,k)\) done in [\textit{J. M. Landsberg} and \textit{J. Weyman}, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 213, No. 11, 2075--2086 (2009; Zbl 1179.14035)].