Symmetric tensors and symmetric tensor rank.pdfVIP

SYMMETRIC TENSORS AND SYMMETRIC TENSOR RANK PIERRE COMON?, GENE GOLUB? , LEK-HENG LIM? , AND BERNARD MOURRAIN? Abstract. A symmetric tensor is a higher order generalization of a symmetric matrix. In this paper, we study various properties of symmetric tensors in relation to a decomposition into a symmetric sum of outer product of vectors. A rank-1 order-k tensor is the outer product of k non-zero vectors. Any symmetric tensor can be decomposed into a linear combination of rank-1 tensors, each of them being symmetric or not. The rank of a symmetric tensor is the minimal number of rank-1 tensors