Orthogonal and unitary tensor decomposition from an algebraic perspective

While every matrix admits a singular value decomposition, in which the terms are pairwise orthogonal in a strong sense, higher-order tensors typically do not admit such an orthogonal decomposition. Those that do have attracted attention from theoretical computer science and scientific computing. We complement this existing body of literature with an algebro-geometric analysis of the set of orthogonally decomposable tensors.More specifically, we prove that they form a real-algebraic variety defined by polynomials of degree at most four. The exact degrees, and the corresponding polynomials, are different in each of three times two scenarios: ordinary, symmetric, or alternating tensors; and real-orthogonal versus complex-unitary. A key feature of our approach is a surprising connection between orthogonally decomposable tensors and semisimple algebras—associative in the ordinary and symmetric settings and of compact Lie type in the alternating setting.     

On the ideals of equivariant tree models

We introduce equivariant tree models in algebraic statistics, which unify and generalise existing tree models such as the general Markov model, the strand symmetric model, and group-based models such as the Jukes–Cantor and Kimura models. We focus on the ideals of such models. We show how the ideals for general trees can be determined from the ideals for stars. A corollary of theoretical importance is that the ideal for a general tree is generated by the ideals of its flattenings at vertices. The main novelty is that our results yield generators of the full ideal rather than an ideal which only defines the model set-theoretically. J. Draisma has been supported by DIAMANT, an NWO mathematics cluster and J. Kuttler by an NSERC Discovery Grant.     

A tropical approach to secant dimensions

Tropical geometry yields good lower bounds, in terms of certain combinatorial-polyhedral optimisation problems, on the dimensions of secant varieties. The approach is especially successful for toric varieties such as Segre-Veronese embeddings. In particular, it gives an attractive pictorial proof of the theorem of Hirschowitz that all Veronese embeddings of the projective plane except for the quadratic one and the quartic one are non-defective; and indeed, no Segre-Veronese embeddings are known where the tropical lower bound does not give the correct dimension. Short self-contained introductions to secant varieties and the required tropical geometry are included.     

Positivity for Gaussian graphical models

Gaussian graphical models are parametric statistical models for jointly normal random variables whose dependence structure is determined by a graph. In previous work, we introduced trek separation, which gives a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of the graph for when a subdeterminant is zero for all covariance matrices that belong to the Gaussian graphical model. Here we extend this result to give explicit cancellation-free formulas for the expansions of non-zero subdeterminants.     

Faithful tropicalisation and torus actions

For any affine variety equipped with coordinates, there is a surjective, continuous map from its Berkovich space to its tropicalisation. Exploiting torus actions, we develop techniques for finding an explicit, continuous section of this map. In particular, we prove that such a section exists for linear spaces, Grassmannians of planes (reproving a result due to Cueto, Häbich, and Werner), matrix varieties defined by the vanishing of 3 × 3-minors, and for the hypersurface defined by Cayley’s hyperdeterminant.     

A Bootstrap-based Method to Achieve Optimality in Estimating the Extreme-value Index

Estimators of the extreme-value index are based on a set of upper order statistics. We present an adaptive method to choose the number of order statistics involved in an optimal way, balancing variance and bias components. Recently this has been achieved for the similar but some what less involved case of regularly varying tails (Drees and Kaufmann, 1997); Danielsson et al., 1996). The present paper follows the line of proof of the last mentioned paper.     

The Hilbert Null-cone on Tuples of Matrices and Bilinear Forms

We describe the null-cone of the representation of G on M ^p , where either G = SL(W) × SL(V) and M = Hom(V,W) (linear maps), or G = SL(V) and M is one of the representations S ²(V ^*) (symmetric bilinear forms), Λ²(V ^*) (skew bilinear forms), or (arbitrary bilinear forms). Here V and W are vector spaces over an algebraically closed field K of characteristic zero and M ^p is the direct sum of p of copies of M. More specifically, we explicitly determine the irreducible components of the null-cone on M ^p . Results of Kraft and Wallach predict that their number stabilises at a certain value of p, and we determine this value. We also answer the question of when the null-cone in M ^p is defined by the polarisations of the invariants on M; typically, this is only the case if either dim V or p is small. A fundamental tool in our proofs is the Hilbert–Mumford criterion for nilpotency (also known as unstability).     

Finiteness for the k-factor model and chirality varieties

This paper deals with two families of algebraic varieties arising from applications. First, the k-factor model in statistics, consisting of n×n covariance matrices of n observed Gaussian random variables that are pairwise independent given k hidden Gaussian variables. Second, chirality varieties inspired by applications in chemistry. A point in such a chirality variety records chirality measurements of all k-subsets among an n-set of ligands. Both classes of varieties are given by a parameterisation, while for applications having polynomial equations would be desirable. For instance, such equations could be used to test whether a given point lies in the variety. We prove that in a precise sense, which is different for the two classes of varieties, these equations are finitely characterisable when k is fixed and n grows.