On the ranks of the third secant variety of Segre-Veronese embeddings

Abstract

We give an upper bound for the rank of the border rank 3 partially symmetric tensors. In the special case of border rank 3 tensors $T\in V_1\otimes \cdots \otimes V_k$ (Segre case) we can show that all ranks among 3 and $k-1$ arise and if $\dim V_i \geq 3$ for all $i$'s, then also all the ranks between $k$ and $2k-1$ arise.