Computing the continuous symmetries of a parametrized variety

Abstract

We prove that the symmetry Lie algebra of a parametrized variety can be determined directly from the parametrization, without computing the vanishing ideal of the variety. We derive a practical polynomial-time Monte Carlo algorithm for computing the symmetry Lie algebra of a parametrized variety. We discuss applications to testing the binomiality of the ideal of a parametrized variety after changing coordinates, and test this property on varieties arising from staged tree models and colored Gaussian graphical models. Finally, we discuss symmetries and binomiality after changing coordinates for rational curves and give a characterization of the symmetries of many secant varieties.