arXiv subjects

Kristian Ranestad

Publications and source records attributed to Kristian Ranestad.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Projective geometry of Wachspress coordinates

We show that there is a unique hypersurface of minimal degree passing through the non-faces of a polytope which is defined by a simple hyperplane arrangement. This generalizes the construction of the adjoint curve of a polygon by Wachspress in 1975. The defining polynomial of our adjoint hypersurface is the adjoint polynomial introduced by Warren in 1996. This is a key ingredient for the definition of Wachspress coordinates, which are barycentric coordinates on an arbitrary convex polytope. The adjoint polynomial also appears both in algebraic statistics, when studying the moments of uniform probability distributions on polytopes, and in intersection theory, when computing Segre classes of monomial schemes. We describe the Wachspress map, the rational map defined by the Wachspress coordinates, and the Wachspress variety, the image of this map. The inverse of the Wachspress map is the projection from the linear span of the image of the adjoint hypersurface. To relate adjoints of polytopes to classical adjoints of divisors in algebraic geometry, we study irreducible hypersurfaces that have the same degree and multiplicity along the non-faces of a polytope as its defining hyperplane arrangement. We list all finitely many combinatorial types of polytopes in dimensions two and three for which such irreducible hypersurfaces exist. In the case of polygons, the general such curves< are elliptic. In the three-dimensional case, the general such surfaces are either K3 or elliptic.

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arXiv2018

Voronoi Cells of Varieties

Every real algebraic variety determines a Voronoi decomposition of its ambient Euclidean space. Each Voronoi cell is a convex semialgebraic set in the normal space of the variety at a point. We compute the algebraic boundaries of these Voronoi cells.

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arXiv2017

Hyperkähler fourfolds and Kummer surfaces

We show that a Hilbert scheme of conics on a Fano fourfold double cover of $\mathbb{P}^2\times\mathbb{P}^2$ ramified along a divisor of bidegree $(2,2)$ admits a $\mathbb{P}^1$-fibration with base being a hyper-Kähler fourfold. We investigate the geometry of such fourfolds relating them with degenerated EPW cubes, with elements in the Brauer groups of $K3$ surfaces of degree $2$, and with Verra threefolds studied in [Ver04]. These hyper-Kähler fourfolds admit natural involutions and complete the classification of geometric realizations of anti-symplectic involutions on hyper-Kähler $4$-folds of type $K3^{[2]}$. As a consequence we present also three constructions of quartic Kummer surfaces in $\mathbb{P}^3$: as Lagrangian and symmetric degeneracy loci and as the base of a fibration of conics in certain threefold quadric bundles over $\mathbb{P}^1$.

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arXiv2017

Varieties of apolar subschemes of toric surfaces

Powersum varieties, also called varieties of sums of powers, have provided examples of interesting relations between varieties since their first appearance in the 19th century. One of the most useful tools to study them is apolarity, a notion originally related to the action of differential operators on the polynomial ring. In this work we make explicit how one can see apolarity in terms of the Cox ring of a variety. In this way powersum varieties are a special case of varieties of apolar schemes; we explicitely describe examples of such varieties in the case of two toric surfaces, when the Cox ring is particularly well-behaved.

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arXiv2017

Algebraic Identifiability of Gaussian Mixtures

We prove that all moment varieties of univariate Gaussian mixtures have the expected dimension. Our approach rests on intersection theory and Terracini's classification of defective surfaces. The analogous identifiability result is shown to be false for mixtures of Gaussians in dimension three and higher. Their moments up to third order define projective varieties that are defective. Our geometric study suggests an extension of the Alexander-Hirschowitz Theorem for Veronese varieties to the Gaussian setting.

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arXiv2017

Variety of power sums and divisors in the moduli space of cubic fourfolds

We show that a cubic fourfold F that is apolar to a Veronese surface has the property that its variety of power sums VSP(F,10) is singular along a K3 surface of genus 20. We prove that these cubics form a divisor in the moduli space of cubic fourfolds and that this divisor is not a Noether-Lefschetz divisor. We use this result to prove that there is no nontrivial Hodge correspondence between a very general cubic and its VSP.

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arXiv2017

Fano congruences of index $3$ and alternating $3$-forms

We study congruences of lines $X_ω$ defined by a sufficiently general choice of an alternating 3-form $ω$ in $n+1$ dimensions, as Fano manifolds of index $3$ and dimension $n-1$. These congruences include the $\mathrm{G}_2$-variety for $n=6$ and the variety of reductions of projected $\mathbb{P}^2 \times \mathbb{P}^2$ for $n=7$. We compute the degree of $X_ω$ as the $n$-th Fine number and study the Hilbert scheme of these congruences proving that the choice of $ω$ bijectively corresponds to $X_ω$ except when $n=5$. The fundamental locus of the congruence is also studied together with its singular locus: these varieties include the Coble cubic for $n=8$ and the Peskine variety for $n=9$. The residual congruence $Y$ of $X_ω$ with respect to a general linear congruence containing $X_ω$ is analysed in terms of the quadrics containing the linear span of $X_ω$. We prove that $Y$ is Cohen-Macaulay but non-Gorenstein in codimension $4$. We also examine the fundamental locus $G$ of $Y$ of which we determine the singularities and the irreducible components.

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arXiv2016

EPW Cubes

We construct a new 20-dimensional family of projective 6-dimensional irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifolds. The elements of this family are deformation equivalent with the Hilbert scheme of three points on a K3 surface and are constructed as natural double covers of special codimension 3 subvarieties of the Grassmanian G(3,6). These codimension 3 subvarieties are defined as Lagrangian degeneracy loci and their construction is parallel to that of EPW sextics, we call them the EPW cubes. As a consequence we prove that the moduli space of polarized IHS sixfolds of K3-type, Beauville-Bogomolov degree 4 and divisibility 2 is unirational.

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arXiv2016

On polynomials with given Hilbert function and applications

Using Macaulay's correspondence we study the family of Artinian Gorenstein local algebras with fixed symmetric Hilbert function decomposition. As an application we give a new lower bound for cactus varieties of the third Veronese embedding. We discuss the case of cubic surfaces, where interesting phenomena occur.

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arXiv2014

Cremona linearizations of some classical varieties

In this paper we present an effective method for linearizing rational varieties of codimension at least two under Cremona transformations, starting from a given parametrization. Using these linearizing Cremonas, we simplify the equations of secant and tangential varieties of some classical examples, including Veronese, Segre and Grassmann varieties. We end the paper by treating the special case of the Segre embedding of the n-fold product of projective spaces, where cumulant Cremonas, arising from algebraic statistics, appear as specific cases of our general construction.

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arXiv2014

Quartic Spectrahedra

Quartic spectrahedra in 3-space form a semialgebraic set of dimension 24. This set is stratified by the location of its ten nodes. There are twenty maximal strata, identified recently by Degtyarev and Itenberg, via the global Torelli Theorem for real K3 surfaces. We here give a new proof that is self-contained and algorithmic. This involves extending Cayley's characterization of quartic symmetroids, by the property that the branch locus of the projection from a node consists of two cubic curves. This paper represents a first step towards the classification of all spectrahedra of a given degree and dimension.

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arXiv2012

The Variety of Polar Simplices

A collection of n distinct hyperplanes L_i ={l_i=0} in P^{n-1}, the n-1-dimensional projective space over an algebraically closed field of characteristic not equal to 2, is a polar simplex of a quadric Q={q=0}, if each L_i is the polar hyperplane of the point p_i, the intersection point of the L_j with j different from i, equivalently, if q= l_1^2+...+l_n^2 for suitable choices of the linear forms l_i. In this paper we study the closure VPS(Q,n) in Hilb_n(P^{n-1}) of the variety of sums of powers presenting Q from a global viewpoint: VPS(Q,n) is a smooth Fano variety of index 2 and Picard number 1 when n<6, and VPS(Q,n) is singular when n>= 6.

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arXiv2011

Algebraic boundaries of Hilbert's SOS cones

We study the geometry underlying the difference between non-negative polynomials and sums of squares. The hypersurfaces that discriminate these two cones for ternary sextics and quaternary quartics are shown to be Noether-Lefschetz loci of K3 surfaces. The projective duals of these hypersurfaces are defined by rank constraints on Hankel matrices. We compute their degrees using numerical algebraic geometry, thereby verifying results due to Maulik and Pandharipande. The non-SOS extreme rays of the two cones of non-negative forms are parametrized respectively by the Severi variety of plane rational sextics and by the variety of quartic symmetroids.

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arXiv2011

On the rank of a symmetric form

We give a lower bound for the degree of a finite apolar subscheme of a symmetric form F, in terms of the degrees of the generators of the annihilator ideal of F. In the special case, when F is a monomial x_0^d_0 x_2^d_2... x_n^d_n with d_0<= d_1<=...<=d_n-1<= d_n we deduce that the minimal length of an apolar subscheme of F is (d_0+1)...(d_n-1+1), and if d_0=..=d_n, then this minimal length coincides with the rank of F.

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arXiv2011

Varieties of sums of powers

The variety of sums of powers of a homogeneous polynomial of degree d in n variables is defined and investigated in some examples, old and new. These varieties are studied via apolarity and syzygies. Classical results of Sylvester (1851), Hilbert (1888), Dixon and Stuart (1906) and some more recent results of Mukai (1992) are presented together with new results for the cases (n,d)=(3,8), (4,2), (5,3). In the last case the variety of sums of 8 powers of a general cubic form is a Fano 5-fold of index 1 and degree 660.

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arXiv2011

On the convex hull of a space curve

The boundary of the convex hull of a compact algebraic curve in real 3-space defines a real algebraic surface. For general curves, that boundary surface is reducible, consisting of tritangent planes and a scroll of stationary bisecants. We express the degree of this surface in terms of the degree, genus and singularities of the curve. We present algorithms for computing their defining polynomials, and we exhibit a wide range of examples.

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arXiv2010

Vector bundles on Fano varieties of genus ten

In this note we describe a unique linear embedding of a prime Fano 4-fold F of genus 10 into the Grassmannian G(3,6). We use this to construct some moduli spaces of bundles on linear sections of F. In particular the moduli space of bundles with Mukai vector (3,L,3) on a generic polarized K3 surface (S,L) of genus 10 is constructed as a double cover of the projective plane branched over a smooth sextic.

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arXiv2010

The Convex Hull of a Variety

We present a characterization, in terms of projective biduality, for the hypersurfaces appearing in the boundary of the convex hull of a compact real algebraic variety.

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