Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

Hyperdeterminants were brought into a modern light by Gelʹfand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky in the 1990's. Inspired by their work, I will answer the question of what happens when you apply a hyperdeterminant to a polynomial (interpreted as a symmetric tensor). The hyperdeterminant of a polynomial factors into several irreducible factors with multiplicities. I identify these factors along with their degrees and their multiplicities, which both have a nice combinatorial interpretation. The analogous decomposition for the μ-discriminant of polynomial is also found. The methods I use to solve this algebraic problem come from geometry of dual varieties, Segre-Veronese varieties, and Chow varieties; as well as representation theory of products of the general linear group.