An asymptotic bound for secant varieties of Segre varieties (Q467138)

The author studies the secant varieties of the Segre embedding of a product of projective spaces. The interest of the topic increased recently because of the connection with the theory of the complexity (border rank) of tensors, and its applications. For any given product \(X=\mathbb P^{n_1}\times\cdots\times\mathbb P^{n_k}\), embedded by the Segre map in a projective space \(\mathbb P^N\), the \(r\)-th secant variety \(\sigma_r(X)\), i.e. the closure of the union of all \((r-1)\)-spaces spanned by \(r\) general points of \(X\), has an expected dimension which follows from a naïve count of parameters. Consequently, there exists an expected value \(R:=R(n_1,\dots,n_k)\) for the number \(R_0\) such that \(\sigma_r(X)=\mathbb P^N\) for all \(r\geq R_0\). The number \(R\) is the \textit{expected maximal border rank}, for the given product. It is an open problem to determine all the cases in which the dimension of \(\sigma_r(X)\) fails to attain the expected value. The main result proven by the author is the existence of an asymptotic \textit{safety region} for \(r\), inside which the secant variety \(\sigma_r(X)\) has the expected value. The region is expressed in the form \(r\leq \Theta R\), where \(R\) is the maximal expected value defined above and the coefficient \(\Theta\) depends on the number of factors \(k\). Moreover \(\Theta\) has limit \(1\), when \(k\) grows to infinity. The author provides an application, by showing how the safety region covers almost all possible values of \(r\), when \(X=(\mathbb P^n)^4\) and \(2\leq n\leq 10\).