Representations of homogeneous polynomials as a sum of powers of linear forms with restricted support (Q2517002)

This paper studies the decomposition of a degree \(d\) homogeneous linear form in the variables \(x_0,\ldots,x_n\) as a sum of \(h\) \(d\)-powers of linear forms in \(x_0,\ldots,x_n\) and \(k\) \(d\)-powers of linear forms in \(x_1,\ldots,x_n\). A first natural question asks whether the dimension of the set of forms which admit such a decomposition is the expected one. This problem can be considered as a generalization of the Waring problem for polynomials, corresponding to the case \(k=0\), solved by the famous Alexander-Hirschowitz theorem. The geometrical translation of this problem is the following. Given a hyperplane \(H\subset\mathbb{P}^n\), let \(J(n,d;h,k)\) be the join of \(h\) copies of \(\nu_d(\mathbb{P}^n)\) and \(k\) copies of \(\nu_d(H)\), where \(\nu_d:\mathbb{P}^n\to \mathbb{P}^{{{n+d}\choose{n}}-1}\) is the Veronese embedding. The problem is then to classify when the variety \(J(x,d;h,k)\) has the expected dimension. The author solves the problem in the following cases:{\parindent=0.6cm\begin{itemize}\item[--] \(d\geq5\) and \(2\leq n\leq \frac{1}{k}{ {n+d-1}\choose{n-1}}\); \item[--] \(d=4\) for some special families of cases. \end{itemize}}