The span of singular tuples of a tensor beyond the boundary format

Abstract

A singular $k$-tuple of a tensor $T$ of format $(n_1,\ldots,n_k)$ is essentially a complex critical point of the distance function from $T$ constrained to the cone of tensors of format $(n_1,\ldots,n_k)$ of rank at most one. A generic tensor has finitely many complex singular $k$-tuples, and their number depends only on the tensor format. Furthermore, if we fix the first $k-1$ dimensions $n_i$, then the number of singular $k$-tuples of a generic tensor becomes a monotone non-decreasing function in one integer variable $n_k$, that stabilizes when $(n_1,\ldots,n_k)$ reaches a boundary format. In this paper, we study the linear span of singular $k$-tuples of a generic tensor. Its dimension also depends only on the tensor format. In particular, we concentrate on special order three tensors and order-$k$ tensors of format $(2,\ldots,2,n)$. As a consequence, if again we fix the first $k-1$ dimensions $n_i$ and let $n_k$ increase, we show that in these special formats, the dimension of the linear span stabilizes as well, but at some concise non-sub-boundary format. We conjecture that this phenomenon holds for an arbitrary format with $k>3$. Finally, we provide equations for the linear span of singular triples of a generic order three tensor $T$ of some special non-sub-boundary format. From these equations, we conclude that $T$ belongs to the linear span of its singular triples, and we conjecture that this is the case for every tensor format.