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Acta Mathematica Vietnamica

Taylor Polynomials of Rational Functions

Aldo Conca , icon-email Simone Naldi , Giorgio Ottaviani , Bernd Sturmfels

Abstract

A Taylor variety consists of all fixed order Taylor polynomials of rational functions, where the number of variables and degrees of numerators and denominators are fixed. In one variable, Taylor varieties are given by rank constraints on Hankel matrices. Inversion of the natural parametrization is known as Padé approximation. We study the dimension and defining ideals of Taylor varieties. Taylor hypersurfaces are interesting for projective geometry, since their Hessians tend to vanish. In three and more variables, there exist defective Taylor varieties whose dimension is smaller than the number of parameters. We explain this with Fröberg’s Conjecture in commutative algebra.