Geometric conditions for strict submultiplicativity of rank and border rank (Q2662176)

The aim of this article is to study geometric conditions for (sub)multiplicative rank and border rank. Let \(X \subset \mathbb{P}(V)\) be a reduced, irreducible and non-degenerate projective variety. The \(X\)-rank of a point \(p \in \mathbb{P}(V)\) is the minimum number \(R_X(p)\) of points of \(X\) such that \(p\) belongs to their span. The \(X\)-border rank of \(p \in \mathbb{P}(V)\) is the minimum \(r = \underline{R}_X(p)\) such that \(p \in \sigma_r(X)\). The authors investigates the multiplicative properties of rank and border rank in terms of geometric properties of the related varieties. Given two varieties \(X_1 \subset \mathbb{P}(V_1)\) and \(X_2\subset \mathbb{P}(V_2)\), denote with \(X_1 \times X_2\) their image under the Segre embedding \(\mathbb{P}(V_1) \times \mathbb{P}(V_2) \rightarrow \mathbb{P}(V_1 \otimes V_2)\). Then there are the inequalities \(R_{X_1 \times X_2}(p_1 \otimes p_2) \leq R_{X_1}(p_1)R_{X_2}(p_2)\) and \(\underline{R}_{X_1 \times X_2}(p_1 \otimes p_2) \leq \underline{R}_{X_1}(p_1)\underline{R}_{X_2}(p_2)\). After having set the notation and preliminaries in the first part, in the second section the authors give bounds on \(R_{X_1 \times X_2}\) when \(p_i\) has \(X_i\)-rank \(2\), \(i=1,2\). In particular they find that in this case submultiplicativity is equivalent to the existence of multisecant lines to the varieties \(X_1\) and \(X_2\). This result is then generalized in terms of multisecant linear spaces giving an upper bound on the \(X^{\times r+1}\)-rank. In the third section the authors introduce a generalization of multisecant line related to submultiplicativity called multidrop line. They obtain geometric conditions for which a secant variety \(\sigma_r(X)\) that is a hypersurface is also rational and for which the multidrop condition is satisfied. In the fourth section the authors restrict their attention to the case of submultiplicativity for homogeneous polynomials, specifically for binary forms, ternary cubics and bivariate monomials. The last section is devoted to study the cases in which multiplicativity holds for \(r\) given varieties \(X_1,\dots,X_r\). In particular they also study the identifiability of points in \(X_1 \times \dots \times X_r\), i.e. the uniqueness of the decomposition evincing the rank, and a particular case in which every \(X_i\) is a Veronese variety.