A lower bound for the determinantal complexity of a hypersurface (Q2362290)

The aim of this article is to give a lower bound for the determinantal complexity of a hypersurface of degree \(d>2\). Let \(k\) be a field and let \(f\in k[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\) be a homogeneous polynomial. The singular locus of the hypersurface \(V(f)\subseteq k^{n}\) is denoted by \(\mathrm{Sing}(f)\); the determinal complexity of the polynomial \(f\) is denoted by \(\mathrm{dc}(f)\). The first theorem of this paper states that for a hypersurface with singular locus of codimension at least 5 the determinantal complexity is bounded below by one more than the codimension of its singular locus in other words: for a homogeneous polynomial \(f\in k[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\) if \(\mathrm{codim}(f)>4\), then \(\mathrm{dc}(f)\geq\mathrm{codim(Sing}(f))+1\). The second fundamental result of this paper (appearing in theorem 2) states that for \(n>3\) there is no smooth (i.e. non singular) degree \(d\) projective hypersurface that has an expression as a determinant of a square matrice of linear forms of size \(d\). As for \(n<4\) a general determinantal expression is nonsingular. Lastly, an answer to an open question of Ressayre is given. This question concerns the determinantal complexity of the unique projective cubic surface containing a single line and determined by the polynomial \(f=xy^2+yt^2+z^3\), where \([x:y:z:t]\) are the homogeneous coordinates in \(\mathbb{P}^{3}\). It is shown that the determinantal complexity of this cubic surface is 5.