Most secant varieties of tangential varieties to Veronese varieties are nondefective

We prove a conjecture stated by Catalisano, Geramita, and Gimigliano in 2002, which claims that the secant varieties of tangential varieties to the $d$th Veronese embedding of the projective $n$-space $\mathbb{P}^n$ have the expected dimension, modulo a few well-known exceptions. As Bernardi, Catalisano, Gimigliano, and Id\'a demonstrated that the proof of this conjecture may be reduced to the case of cubics, i.e., $d=3$, the main contribution of this work is the resolution of this base case. The proposed proof proceeds by induction on the dimension $n$ of the projective space via a specialization argument. This reduces the proof to a large number of initial cases for the induction, which were settled using a computer-assisted proof. The individual base cases were computationally challenging problems. Indeed, the largest base case required us to deal with the tangential variety to the third Veronese embedding of $\mathbb{P}^{79}$ in $\mathbb{P}^{88559}$.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures, extended the introduction, and added a C++ code as an ancillary fil

Generating Polynomials and Symmetric Tensor Decompositions

This paper studies symmetric tensor decompositions. For symmetric tensors, there exist linear relations of recursive patterns among their entries. Such a relation can be represented by a polynomial, which is called a generating polynomial. The homogenization of a generating polynomial belongs to the apolar ideal of the tensor. A symmetric tensor decomposition can be determined by a set of generating polynomials, which can be represented by a matrix. We call it a generating matrix. Generally, a symmetric tensor decomposition can be determined by a generating matrix satisfying certain conditions. We characterize the sets of such generating matrices and investigate their properties (e.g., the existence, dimensions, nondefectiveness). Using these properties, we propose methods for computing symmetric tensor decompositions. Extensive examples are shown to demonstrate the efficiency of proposed methods.Comment: 35 page

Kronecker powers of tensors and Strassen’s laser method

We answer a question, posed implicitly in [18, §11], [11, Rem. 15.44] and explicitly in [9, Problem 9.8], showing the border rank of the Kronecker square of the little Coppersmith-Winograd tensor is the square of the border rank of the tensor for all q > 2, a negative result for complexity theory. We further show that when q > 4, the analogous result holds for the Kronecker cube. In the positive direction, we enlarge the list of explicit tensors potentially useful for the laser method. We observe that a well-known tensor, the 3×3 determinant polynomial regarded as a tensor, det3 ∈ C9 C9 C9, could potentially be used in the laser method to prove the exponent of matrix multiplication is two. Because of this, we prove new upper bounds on its Waring rank and rank (both 18), border rank and Waring border rank (both 17), which, in addition to being promising for the laser method, are of interest in their own right. We discuss “skew” cousins of the little Coppersmith-Winograd tensor and indicate why they may be useful for the laser method. We establish general results regarding border ranks of Kronecker powers of tensors, and make a detailed study of Kronecker squares of tensors in C3 C3 C

Tensor decomposition and homotopy continuation

A computationally challenging classical elimination theory problem is to compute polynomials which vanish on the set of tensors of a given rank. By moving away from computing polynomials via elimination theory to computing pseudowitness sets via numerical elimination theory, we develop computational methods for computing ranks and border ranks of tensors along with decompositions. More generally, we present our approach using joins of any collection of irreducible and nondegenerate projective varieties $X_1,\ldots,X_k\subset\mathbb{P}^N$ defined over $\mathbb{C}$. After computing ranks over $\mathbb{C}$, we also explore computing real ranks. Various examples are included to demonstrate this numerical algebraic geometric approach.Comment: We have added two examples: A Coppersmith-Winograd tensor, Matrix multiplication with zeros. (26 pages, 1 figure