Ideals of bounded rank symmetric tensors are generated in bounded degree (Q504135)

The \textit{rank} of a tensor \(T\) is a good measure for its complexity. This explains why a good deal of researches are devoted to methods for determining the rank of relevant tensors. If one accepts small perturbations of \(T\), the notion of rank turns into the notion of \textit{border rank}, i.e. the generic rank in a neighbourhood of \(T\). Tensors whose border rank is bounded by \(r\) form an algebraic variety, the \textit{\(r\)-secant variety} \(\sigma_r(X)\) of the variety \(X\) of tensors of rank \(1\). Thus, one strategy to compute the border rank of a tensor \(T\) consists in determining defining equations for the varieties \(\sigma_r(X)\) and test them on \(T\). Unfortunately, while we have many results on the dimension of secant varieties, very little is known about their defining equations, except for a small set of initial cases. The author improves our knowledge on the defining equations, in the case of symmetric tensors. The variety \(X_{n,d}\) of rank \(1\) symmetric tensors \(n\times\dots\times n\), \(d\)-times, corresponds to the variety of homogeneous polynomials of degree \(d\) in \(n\) variables which are power of linear forms. In geometric terms, \(X_{n,d}\) is a Veronese embedding of a linear space of dimension \(n\). It is well known that \(X_{n,d}\) is defined by quadratic equations, but the equations for its secant varieties can have much bigger degrees. The author shows that, even if one lets \(n,d\) grow, there exists a constant \(C(r)\), which depends only on the rank \(r\), such that \(\sigma_r(X_{n,d})\) is defined by equations of degree \(\leq C(r)\). This is rather surprising, as \(n,d\) determine the dimension of the space where \(X_{n,d}\) lives. The proof is achieved by combining the various Veronese embeddings in a single algebraic structure, a Hopf ring, which is proved to have the required noetherianity properties.