English

Determinantal representations of the cubic discriminant

Algebraic Geometry 2019-12-13 v3

Abstract

We compute and study two determinantal representations of the discriminant of a cubic quaternary form. The first representation is the Chow form of the 22-uple embedding of P3\mathbb{P}^3 and is computed as the Pfaffian of the Chow form of a rank 2 Ulrich bundle on this Veronese variety. We then consider the determinantal representation described by Nanson. We investigate the geometric nature of cubic surfaces whose discriminant matrices satisfy certain rank conditions. As a special case of interest, we use certain minors of this matrix to suggest equations vanishing on the locus of kk-nodal cubic surfaces.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.05579,
  title  = {Determinantal representations of the cubic discriminant},
  author = {Dominic Bunnett and Hanieh Keneshlou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.05579},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures. This version contains an expanded introduction, further support for the conjectures and includes more references