F-structures and integral points on semiabelian varieties over finite fields

Motivated by the problem of determining the structure of integral points on subvarieties of semiabelian varieties defined over finite fields, we prove a quantifier elimination result for certain modules over finite simple extensions of the integers given together with predicates for orbits of the distinguished generator of the ring.Comment: 33 pages, correction made to authors' informatio

Secant varieties of toric varieties

Let $X_P$ be a smooth projective toric variety of dimension $n$ embedded in \PP^r using all of the lattice points of the polytope $P$. We compute the dimension and degree of the secant variety \Sec X_P. We also give explicit formulas in dimensions 2 and 3 and obtain partial results for the projective varieties $X_A$ embedded using a set of lattice points A \subset P\cap\ZZ^n containing the vertices of $P$ and their nearest neighbors.Comment: v1, AMS LaTex, 5 figures, 25 pages; v2, reference added; v3, This is a major rewrite. We have strengthened our main results to include a classification of smooth lattice polytopes P such that Sec X_P does not have the expected dimension. (See Theorems 1.4 and 1.5.) There was also a considerable amount of reorganization, and some expository material was eliminated; v4, 28 pages, minor corrections, additional and updated reference

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