Minimality of tensors of fixed multilinear rank

We discover a geometric property of the space of tensors of fixed multilinear (Tucker) rank. Namely, it is shown that real tensors of fixed multilinear rank form a minimal submanifold of the Euclidean space of tensors endowed with the Frobenius inner product. We also establish the absence of local extrema for linear functionals restricted to the submanifold of rank-one tensors, finding application in statistics.