The Hurwitz form of a projective variety (Q321295)

Let \(X\) be an irreducible algebraic variety of dimension \(d\geq 1\) and degree \(p\) in the complex projective space \(\mathbb P^n_{\mathbb C}\). A classical approach to investigate \(X\) consists in considering a general hyperplane section of \(X\). Indeed, many geometric properties of \(X\) are preserved under general hyperplane section, such as the degree, which can be easier read in a variety of smaller dimension. In this paper, the author considers hyperplane sections of \(X\) that are not general, in the following sense. He considers the subvariety \(\mathcal H_X\) of the Grassmannian of codimension \(d\) linear subspaces \(L\) in \(\mathbb P^n_{\mathbb C}\) such that \(L\cap X\) does not consist of \(p\) reduced points. If \(X\) has degree \(p\geq 2\), then the variety \(\mathcal H_X\) is an irreducible hypersurface defined by an irreducible element \(\mathrm{Hu}_X\) in Plücker coordinates, which is called the Hurwitz form of \(X\) (and which is unique modulo the ideal of quadratic Plücker relations). Moreover, denoted by \(g\) the sectional genus of \(X\), if the singular locus of \(X\) has codimension \(\geq 2\) then the degree of \(\mathrm{Hu}_X\) is \(2p+2g-2\) (Theorem 1.1). If \(X\) is Cohen-Macaulay, the degree of \(\mathrm{Hu}_X\) can be obtained from the Hilbert polynomial of \(X\) (Remark 2.6). Inspired by an application in computer vision (see Example 2.5), this paper deals with the problem of explicitly computing the Hurwitz form of a projective variety taking into account the fact that ``if \(X\) is defined on \(\mathbb Q\) then also is \(\mathcal H_X\)''. If the parameters \(d,n,p,g\) are small enough, it is possible to obtain an expression of the Hurwitz form in Plücker coordinates by computer algebra (Example 2.7). Settings other than Plücker coordinates can give different information and the author also studies the Hurwitz form in Stiefel coordinates (which is unique up to sign) finding a relation with the dual variety (Example 2.2, Proposition 2.4). Moreover, he compares the Hurwitz polytope, defined as the weight polytope of the Hurwitz form in Plücker coordinates, with the Chow polytope (Section 3) and focuses on the behaviour of the Hurwitz polytope of the special fiber of suitable flat families (Theorem 4.1). Many explicative examples are provided in this paper together with several motivations for the investigation of the Hurwitz form and possible applications of this interesting study, such as for finding a solution to a problem posed in [\textit{R. Sanyal} et al., Adv. Math. 244, 678--707 (2013; Zbl 1284.15006)] about the entropic discriminant.