Multi-secant lemma (Q611029)

The authors provide a new characterization of hypersurfaces in a projective space, which takes care also of the reducible case, in terms of multisecant lines. It is clear that hypersurfaces \(X\) (of degree at least \(4\)) share the following property: for some \(k=3,\dots,\deg(X)-1\), through any point of \(X\) one can find a \(k\)-secant line and every \(k\)-secant line to \(X\) is also a \((k+1)\)-secant line. The authors consider (not necessarily reduced) varieties \(X\) which satisfy the previous condition. They prove that, under some connectivity assumption on the set of multisecant lines, such varieties \(X\) can be embedded as hypersurfaces. The connectivity condition cannot be avoided, otherwise there are counterexamples: one of them is a particular set of four quadric surfaces (cones) in \(\mathbb P^4\).