Tensor decomposition and homotopy continuation

A computationally challenging classical elimination theory problem is to compute polynomials which vanish on the set of tensors of a given rank. By moving away from computing polynomials via elimination theory to computing pseudowitness sets via numerical elimination theory, we develop computational methods for computing ranks and border ranks of tensors along with decompositions. More generally, we present our approach using joins of any collection of irreducible and nondegenerate projective varieties X1,…,Xk⊂PN defined over C. After computing ranks over C, we also explore computing real ranks. A variety of examples are included to demonstrate the numerical algebraic geometric approaches.