An algorithm for generic and low-rank specific identifiability of complex tensors

Abstract: We propose a new sufficient condition for verifying whether generic rank-r complex tensors of arbitrary order admit a unique decomposition as a linear combination of rank-1 tensors. A practical algorithm is proposed for verifying this condition, with which it was established that in all spaces of dimension less than 15000, with a few known exceptions, listed in the paper, generic identifiability holds for ranks up to one less than the generic rank of the space. This is the largest possible rank value for which generic identifiability can hold, except for spaces with a perfect shape. The algorithm can also verify the identifiability of a given specific rank-r decomposition, provided that it can be shown to correspond to a nonsingular point of the r-th order secant variety. For sufficiently small rank, which nevertheless improves upon the known bounds for specific identifiability, some local equations of this variety are known, allowing us to verify this property. As a particular example of our approach, we prove the identifiability of a specific 5x5x5 tensor of rank 7, which cannot be handled by the conditions recently provided in [I. Domanov and L. De Lathauwer, On the Uniqueness of the Canonical Polyadic Decomposition of third-order tensors--Part II: Uniqueness of the overall decomposition, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 34(3), 2013]. Finally, we also present a surprising new class of weakly-defective Segre varieties that nevertheless turns out to admit a generically unique decomposition.