Formulas for the eigendiscriminants of ternary and quaternary forms

Abstract

A $d$-dimensional tensor $A$ of format $n\times n\times \cdots \times n$ defines naturally a rational map $\Psi$ from the projective space ${\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}$ to itself and its eigenscheme is then the subscheme of ${\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}$ of fixed points of $\Psi$. The eigendiscriminant is an irreducible polynomial in the coefficients of $A$ that vanishes for a given tensor if and only if its eigenscheme is singular. In this paper we contribute two formulas for the computation of eigendiscriminants in the cases $n=3$ and $n=4$. In particular, by restriction to symmetric tensors, we obtain closed formulas for the eigendiscriminants of plane curves and surfaces in ${\mathbb{P}}^3$ as the ratio of some determinants of resultant matrices.

15 pages