DiMaI - Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica "Ulisse Dini"

Massimiliano Mella (Ferrara)

Varieties of Sums of Powers

abstract: Varieties of Sums of Powers describe the additive
decompositions of an homogeneous polynomial into powers of linear forms.
Despite their long history, going back to Sylvester and Hilbert, few of
them are known for special degrees and number of variables. In this talk
I aim to suggest a different viewpoint. Via an embedding into
Grassmannians birational properties like rationality, unirationality or
rational connectedness can be studied via rational subvarieties of the
Hilbert scheme of P^n.