Improved Debordering of Waring Rank

Abstract: We prove that if a degree-$d$ homogeneous polynomial $f$ has border Waring rank $\underline{\mathrm{WR}}({f}) = r$, then its Waring rank is bounded by [ {\mathrm{WR}}({f}) \leq d \cdot r^{O(\sqrt{r})}. ] This result significantly improves upon the recent bound ${\mathrm{WR}}({f}) \leq d \cdot 4^r$ established in [Dutta, Gesmundo, Ikenmeyer, Jindal, and Lysikov, STACS 2024], which itself was an improvement over the earlier bound ${\mathrm{WR}}({f}) \leq d^r$.