Distinguishing secant from cactus varieties (Q6047300)

The \(k\)-cactus variety of a smooth projective variety \(X\) is the closure of the set of points which lie in the span of a length \(k\), non-necessarily reduced, \(0\)-dimensional subscheme of \(X\). The \(k\)-th secant variety of \(X\) is included in the \(k\)-cactus variety, and the inclusion is often strict. When \(X\) is the \(d\)-th Veronese variety, as soon as \(k\geq 14\) the inclusion becomes strict for all large \(d\). The authors describe the structure of the \(14\)-cactus variety \(\kappa\) of the \(d\)-th Veronese embedding \(X\) of \(\mathbb P^n\), when \(d\geq 5\) and \(n\geq 6\). Using the classification of components of Gorenstein ideals with Hilbert function \((1,6,6,1)\), which are apolar to forms in \(X\), the authors show that \(\kappa\) splits in two components: the \(14\)-secant variety and a second component \(Y\) whose general elements correspond to polynomials of type \(x^{d-3}P\), where \(x\) is a linear form and \(P\) is a cubic form. Thus, the authors provide an algorithm which detects which component of \(\kappa\) contains a given form of cactus rank \(14\). A similar analysis is possible for some Grassmann-cactus varieties of Veronese varieties, in particular for the variety of 3-dimensional spaces contained in spaces generated by subschemes of length \(8\) in \(X\).