The $4 \times 4$ orthostochastic variety

Abstract

Orthostochastic matrices are the entrywise squares of orthogonal matrices, and naturally arise in various contexts, including notably definite symmetric determinantal representations of real polynomials. However, defining equations for the real variety were previously known only for $3 \times 3$ matrices. We study the real variety of $4 \times 4$ orthostochastic matrices, and find a minimal defining set of equations consisting of 6 quintics and 3 octics. The techniques used here involve a wide range of both symbolic and computational methods, in computer algebra and numerical algebraic geometry.