Syllabus: Tensors

MCS 590, Fall 2010

LCD-grad 31573,
MWF 12–12:50, Thaft Hall 121
Instructor: Shmuel Friedland
Office: 1215 SEO, phone: 413-2159, e:mail: friedlan@uic.edu,
web: http://www.math.uic.edu/∼friedlan

OFFICE HOURS: MWF 9:30-10:20 or by appointment

TEXT: Lecture Notes will be supplied by the instructor.
PREREQUISITE: Math 310 or Math 320, (first course in Linear Algebra) or their equiv-
alent.

1 Introduction
Theory of tensors is a classical subject in multilinear algebra, differential geometry and gen-
eral relativity. There is a recent revival of this subject in engineering and computer science.
In engineering, tensor are multi-arrays with at least 3 indices. It appears frequently in data
analysis, communication and video surveillance. The recent interest in tensor in computer
science is in quantum computing and quantum information theory; and algebraic statistics.
In this course we first will discuss basic notions for tensors: basic concept of tensor products
of vector spaces and operators, various notion of tensor ranks. We will discuss briefly alge-
braic statistics, phylogenic trees and their invariants. The computational part of tensor will
evolve around the approximation of tensors by low rank tensors, analogs of singular value
decomposition, alternating minimization and Newton methods on Grassmannians. The last
part of the course will be devoted to quantum information theory and quantum computing.
I will supply the lecture notes of the course.

2 Topics of the course

1. Vector spaces, inner products and norms.
2. Linear operators, matrices and canonical forms.
3. SVD and low rank approximations.

4. Tensors products of spaces and Kronecker products.

5. Rank of tensors.
6. Multilinear maps as tensors. Applications to product of matrices
7. Low rank approximation of tensors.

8. The role of algebraic geometry in tensor analysis: Segre varieties.

9. Applications to algebraic statistics: Phylogenic ideals and varieties for general Markov
model.

1
10. Nonnegative tensors: Perron-Frobenius theorem, monotone homogenous maps, scal-
ing.
11. Introduction to quantum information and quantum computing.

3 GRADING: Homework
References
[1] E.S. Allman and J.A. Rhodes, Phylogenic ideals and varieties for general Markov
model, Advances in Appl. Math., 40 (2008) 127-148. (Discusses some mathematical
model related to tensors, phylogenic trees and their invariants.)
[2] R.M. Bowen and C.-C. Wang, Introduction to Vectors and Tensors, Vol. 1, Linear
and Multilinear Algebra, http://www1.mengr.tamu.edu/rbowen/
[3] S. Friedland, Matrices, a draft of a book,
http://www2.math.uic.edu/∼friedlan/bookm.pdf
[4] T. Kolda, Software and material on tensors, http://csmr.ca.sandia.gov/ tgkolda/
[5] A. Nielsen and I.L. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information,
Cambridge University Press 2000. (A thoutrough treatment of the topic by physi-
cists.)
[6] L. Pachter and B. Sturmfels, Algebraic Statistics for Computational Biology, Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005. (Many topics related to tensors in algebraic statis-
tics.)
[7] J.R. Ruz-Tolosa and E. Castill, From vectors to tensors, Springer 2005. (Modern
treatise of classical results on tensors.)
[8] N.S.Yanofsky and M.A. Mannucci, Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists,
Cambridge University Press, 2008. (An introductory course on the subject.)