Hyperdeterminantal boundary conjecture for real six-term decompositions of quartics

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Let ff be a ternary quartic of real rank 66 and signature (3,3)(3,3), (4,2)(4,2), or (5,1)(5,1). Let VSP⁡(f)R\operatorname{VSP}(f)_\mathbb{R} be the real points of the variety of sums of powers, and let SSP⁡(f)R\operatorname{SSP}(f)_\mathbb{R} be the semialgebraic subset parametrizing decompositions into six real points. Let SSP⁡(f)R‾\overline{\operatorname{SSP}(f)_\mathbb{R}} denote its closure. Hyperdeterminantal boundary conjecture. The semialgebraic set SSP⁡(f)R‾\overline{\operatorname{SSP}(f)_\mathbb{R}} is strictly contained in the variety VSP⁡(f)R\operatorname{VSP}(f)_\mathbb{R}. The conjecture concerns the existence of a non-real-decomposition boundary inside the real variety of sums of powers; the surrounding discussion identifies its Zariski closure with a hyperdeterminantal hypersurface, but does not establish that this boundary always exists. The source gives no resolution status.

References

Primary source

Mateusz Michałek, Hyunsuk Moon, Bernd Sturmfels and Emanuele Ventura, “Real Rank Geometry of Ternary Forms”, arXiv:1601.06574 (2016).

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