Adjacency preserving maps on symmetric tensors (Q6489362)

Let \(\mathfrak S^r(U)\) denote the vector space of all \(r\)-symmetric tensors of a vector space \(U\) over a field \(F\). The \textit{symmetric rank} of an element \(A \in \mathfrak S^r(U)\), denoted by \(\text{rank}_S(A)\), is the minimal positive integer for which \(A\) may be expressed as a linear combination of symmetric tensors of the form \(u \otimes u \otimes \cdots \otimes u\) (\(r\)-times), where \(u \in U\). Use \(u^{\otimes r}\) for shorthand notation.NEWLINENEWLINEA map \(\phi: \mathfrak S^r(U) \to \mathfrak S^s(V)\) is said to be \textit{adjacency-preserving in both directions} if \(\text{rank}_S(A-B) = 1 \iff \text{rank}_S(\phi(A)-\phi(B)) = 1\). This is related to the notion of adjacency initiated by Hua in the 1940's to study the geometry of matrices. See the bibliography of the paper for an extensive list of references.NEWLINENEWLINEIn Theorem 1.2, the authors characterize surjective maps \(\phi: \mathfrak S^r(U) \to \mathfrak S^s(V)\) that are adjacency-preserving in both directions where \(U\) and \(V\) are vector spaces over fields \(F\) and \(K\) respectively. If the conditions \(\dim U \geq 3\) and \(|F| \geq r+1\) hold true, the authors show that \(\phi\) exists if and only if \(r=s\), and there exist a field isomorphism \(\tau: F \to K\) and \(\tau\)-semilinear transformation \(f: U \to V\) such that \[\phi(A) = \lambda \sum_{i=1}^k \tau(\alpha_i)f(u_i)^{\otimes r} + \mathcal R\] whenever \(A = \sum_{i=1}^k \alpha_i u_i^{\otimes r}\) with \(\alpha_i \in F\) and \(\lambda \in K\) is a fixed scalar and \(\mathcal R\) is a fixed element of \(\mathfrak S^r(V)\). In other words, \(\phi\) acts as a \(\tau\)-semilinear transformation on the symmetric tensors, up to multiplication by a scalar and addition by a fixed element \(\mathcal R\). Importantly, it is merely assumed that \(\phi\) is surjective and adjacency-preserving.NEWLINENEWLINEThe technical assumptions on the dimension of \(U\) and the size of the field are necessary, as shown in Example 5.2, where a three-dimensional space \(U\) over \(F_2\), the field of two elements, is considered. They define a linear isomorphism \(\mathfrak S^2(U) \to \mathfrak S^2(U)\) implemented by a certain permutation and show that it is adjacency-preserving in both directions, but cannot be expressed in a canonical form. NEWLINENEWLINESome conjectures are presented at the end of this interesting paper.