Condition of Intersecting a Projective Variety with a Varying Linear Subspace

Abstract: The numerical condition of the problem of intersecting a fixed

m

-dimensional irreducible complex projective variety

Z s u b s e t e q m a t h b b P^{n}

with a varying linear subspace

L s u b s e t e q m a t h b b P^{n}

of complementary dimension

s = n - m

is studied. We define the intersection condition number

k a p p a_{Z} (L, z)

at a smooth intersection point

z i n Z c a p L

as the norm of the derivative of the locally defined solution map

m a t h b b G (s, m a t h b b P^{n}) o m a t h b b P^{n},, L m a p s t o z

. We show that

k a p p a_{Z} (L, z) = 1 / s i n a l p h a

, where

a l p h a

is the minimum angle between the tangent spaces

T_{z} Z

and

T_{z} L

. From this, we derive a condition number theorem that expresses

1 / k a p p a_{Z} (L, z)

as the distance of

L

to the local Schubert variety, which consists of the linear subspaces having an ill-posed intersection with

Z

at

z

. A probabilistic analysis of the maximum condition number

k a p p a_{Z} (L) : = m a x k a p p a_{Z} (L, z_{i})

, taken over all intersection points

z_{i} i n Z c a p L

, leads to the study of the volume of tubes around the Hurwitz hypersurface

S i g m a (Z)

. As a first step towards this, we express the volume of

S i g m a (Z)

in terms of its degree.

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