Effective results on projective normality of the first and second secant varieties

Abstract

In joint work with Lacini and Sheridan, we proved that the first and second secant varieties of a smooth projective complex variety embedded by the complete linear system of a sufficiently positive line bundle are projectively normal. The purpose of this paper is to establish effective results on how positive the embedding line bundle must be for this result to hold. We also provide effective conditions under which the defining ideal of the first secant variety is generated by cubics, and furthermore, generated by $3 \times 3$-minors of a matrix of linear forms. The latter result gives an effective version of a theorem of Agostini and the second author.