On secant varieties of compact Hermitian symmetric spaces

Abstract

We show that the secant varieties of rank three compact Hermitian symmetric spaces in their minimal homogeneous embeddings are normal, with rational singularities. We show that their ideals are generated in degree three—with one exception, the secant variety of the 21-dimensional spinor variety in P 63 where we show that the ideal is generated in degree four. We also discuss the coordinate rings of secant varieties of compact Hermitian symmetric spaces.