Unstable hyperplanes for Steiner bundles and multidimensional matrices

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of multidimensional matrices and their relation to Steiner bundles, characterizing stability, symmetry groups, and invariants, and connecting matrix actions to geometric bundle properties.

Contribution

It provides a characterization of non-stable matrices, links matrices to Steiner bundles, and answers stability questions for Steiner bundles under automorphism groups.

Findings

Non-stable matrices are in the orbit of a triangular matrix.

Symmetry group of a Steiner bundle is contained in SL(2).

Number of unstable hyperplanes yields a discrete invariant of matrices.

Abstract

We study some properties of the natural action of $SL(V_0) \times...\times SL(V_p)$ on nondegenerate multidimensional complex matrices $A\in\P (V_0\otimes...\otimes V_p)$ of boundary format(in the sense of Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky); in particular we characterize the non stable ones,as the matrices which are in the orbit of a "triangular" matrix, and the matrices with a stabilizer containing $\C^*$, as those which are in the orbit of a "diagonal" matrix. For $p=2$ it turns out that a non degenerate matrix $A\in\P (V_0\otimes V_1\otimes V_2)$ detects a Steiner bundle $S_A$ (in the sense of Dolgachev and Kapranov) on the projective space $\P^{n}, n = dim (V_2)-1$. As a consequence we prove that the symmetry group of a Steiner bundle is contained in SL(2) and that the SL(2)-invariant Steiner bundles are exactly the bundles introduced by Schwarzenberger [Schw], which correspond to "identity" matrices. We can characterize the points of the moduli space of Steiner bundles which are stable for the action of $Aut(\P^n)$, answering in the first nontrivial case a question posed by Simpson. In the opposite direction we obtain some results about Steiner bundles which imply properties of matrices. For example the number of unstable hyperplanes of $S_A$ (counting multiplicities) produces an interesting discrete invariant of $A$, which can take the values $0, 1, 2, ... ,\dim~V_0+1$ or $ \infty$; the $\infty$ case occurs if and only if $S_A$ is Schwarzenberger (and $A$ is an identity). Finally, the Gale transform for Steiner bundles introduced by Dolgachev and Kapranov under the classical name of association can be understood in this setting as the transposition operator on multidimensional matrices.