-schemes and toric varieties.
We compute the essential dimension of the functors Forms and Hypersurf of equivalence classes of homogeneous polynomials in variables and hypersurfaces in , respectively, over any base field of characteristic . Here two polynomials (or hypersurfaces) over are considered equivalent if they are related by a linear change of coordinates with coefficients in . Our proof is based on a new Genericity Theorem for algebraic stacks, which is of independent interest. As another application of the...