Osculating Varieties of Veronese Varieties and Their Higher Secant Varieties

Abstract

AbstractWe consider the k-osculating varieties Ok,n.d to the (Veronese) d-uple embeddings of ℙn. We study the dimension of their higher secant varieties via inverse systems (apolarity). By associating certain 0-dimensional schemes Y ⊂ ℙn to and by studying their Hilbert functions, we are able, in several cases, to determine whether those secant varieties are defective or not.