Decomposition of tensors

Abstract

We consider representations of tensors as sums of decomposable tensors or, equivalently, decomposition of multilinear forms into one--forms. In this short note we show that there exists a particular finite strongly orthogonal decomposition which is essentially unique and yields all critical points of the multilinear form on the torus. In particular, this determines exactly the number of critical points of the multilinear form, giving an affirmative answer to a finiteness conjecture by Friedland.