Homotopy techniques for tensor decomposition and perfect identifiability

Abstract

Let T be a general complex tensor of format ( n 1 , … , n d ) {(n_{1},\dots,n_{d})} . When the fraction ∏ i n i / [ 1 + ∑ i ( n i - 1 ) ] {\prod_{i}n_{i}/[1+\sum_{i}(n_{i}-1)]} is an integer, and a natural inequality (called balancedness) is satisfied, it is expected that T has finitely many minimal decomposition as a sum of decomposable tensors. We show how homotopy techniques allow us to find all the decompositions of T, starting from a given one. Computationally, this gives a guess regarding the total number of such decompositions. This guess matches exactly with all cases previously known, and predicts several unknown cases. Some surprising experiments yielded two new cases of generic identifiability: formats ( 3 , 4 , 5 ) {(3,4,5)} and ( 2 , 2 , 2 , 3 ) {(2,2,2,3)} which have a unique decomposition as the sum of six and four decomposable tensors, respectively. We conjecture that these two cases together with the classically known matrix pencils are the only cases where generic identifiability holds, i.e., the only identifiable cases. Building on the computational experiments, we use algebraic geometry to prove these two new cases are indeed generically identifiable.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Dec 22, 2016
Source ID
10.1515/crelle-2016-0067

Entities

People

  • Andrew J. Sommese
  • Giorgio Maria Ottaviani
  • Jonathan D Hauenstein
  • Luke Oeding

Organizations

  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  • Auburn University
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
  • National Science Foundation
  • University of Florence
  • University of Notre Dame

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Calculus or Mathematical Analysis
  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.