Schur apolarity and how to use it

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the tensor decomposition of structured tensors related to SL(n)-irreducible representations. Structured tensors are multilinear objects satisfying specific symmetry relations and their decompositions are of great interest in the applications. In this thesis we look for the decompositions of tensors belonging to irreducible representations of SL(n) into sum of elementary objects associated to points of SL(n)-rational hoogeneous varieties. This family includes Veronese varieties (symmetric tensors), Grassmann varieties (skew-symmetric tensors), and flag varieties. A classic tool to study the decomposition of symmetric tensors is the apolarity theory, which dates back to Sylvester. An analogous skew-symmetric apolarity theory for skew-symmetric tensors have been developed only few years ago. In this thesis we describe a global apolarity theory called Schur apolarity theory, which is suitable for tensors belonging to any irreducible representation of SL(n). Examples, properties and applications of such apolarity are studied with details and original results both in algebra and geoemtry are provided.