For a $G$-variety $X$ with an open orbit, we define its boundary $\partial X$ as the complement of the open orbit. The action sheaf $S_X$ is the subsheaf of the tangent sheaf made of vector fields tangent to $\partial X$. We prove, for a large family of smooth spherical varieties, the vanishing of the cohomology groups $H^i(X,S_X)$ for $i>0$, extending results of F. Bien and M. Brion.
We apply these results to study the local rigidity of the smooth projective varieties with Picard number one classified in a previous paper of the first author.
Symmetric varieties are normal equivariant open embeddings of symmetric homogeneous spaces and they are interesting examples of spherical varieties. The principal goal of this article is to study the rigidity under Kähler deformations of smooth projective symmetric varieties with Picard number one.
Let D be a central division algebra over a field F. We study in this note the rigidity of the motivic decompositions of the Severi-Brauer varieties of D, with respect to the ring of coefficients and to the base field. We first show that if the ring of coefficient is a field, these decompositions only depend on its characteristic. In a second part we show that if D remains division over a field extension E/F, the motivic decompositions of several Severi-Brauer varieties of D remain the same when extending the scalars to E.
Trinomial varieties are affine varieties given by some special system of equations consisting of polynomials with three terms. Such varieties are total coordinate spaces of normal rational varieties with torus action of complexity one. For an affine variety X we consider the subgroup SAut(X) of the automorphism group generated by all algebraic subgroups isomorphic to the additive group of the ground field. An affine variety X is rigid if SAut(X) is trivial. In opposite an affine variety is flexible if SAut(X) acts transitively on the regular locus. Arzhantsev proved a criterium for a factorial…
Upper bounds on projective rigidity of each homogeneously embedded homogeneous variety are determined; and a new, invariant characterization of the Fubini forms is given.
Jun-Muk Hwang and Ngaiming Mok have proved the rigidity of irreducible Hermitian symmetric spaces of compact type under Kaehler degeneration. I adapt their argument to the algebraic setting in positive characteristic, where cominuscule homogeneous varieties serve as an analogue of Hermitian symmetric spaces. The main result gives an explicit (computable in terms of Schubert calculus) lower bound on the characteristic of the base field, guaranteeing that a smooth projective family with cominuscule homogeneous generic fibre is isotrivial. The bound depends only on the type of the generic fibre, …
Given a rational homogeneous manifold $S=G/P$ of Picard number one and a Schubert variety $S_0 $ of $S$, the pair $(S,S_0)$ is said to be homologically rigid if any subvariety of $S$ having the same homology class as $S_0$ must be a translate of $S_0$ by the automorphism group of $S$. The pair $(S,S_0)$ is said to be Schur rigid if any subvariety of $ S$ with homology class equal to a multiple of the homology class of $S_0$ must be a sum of translates of $S_0$. Earlier we completely determined homologically rigid pairs $(S,S_0)$ in case $S_0 $ is homogeneous and answered the same question in s…
We give a brief survey of the concept of birational rigidity, from its origins in the two-dimensional birational geometry, to its current state. The main ingredients of the method of maximal singularities are discussed. The principal results of the theory of birational rigidity of higher-dimensional Fano varieties and fibrations are given and certain natural conjectures are formulated.
We classify smooth Schubert varieties S_0 in a rational homogeneous manifold S associated to a short root, and show that they are rigid in the sense that any subvariety of S having the same homology class as S_0 is induced by the action of Aut_0(S), unless S_0 is linear.
One can associate to a bipartite graph a so-called edge ring whose spectrum is an affine normal toric variety. We characterize the faces of the (edge) cone associated to this toric variety in terms of some independent sets of the bipartite graph. By applying to this characterization the combinatorial study of deformations of toric varieties by Altmann, we present certain criteria for their rigidity purely in terms of graphs.
In this paper, we study the analogue of the Shafarevich conjecture for polarized Calabi-Yau varieties. We use variations of Hodge structures and Higgs bundles to establish a criterion for the {\it rigidity} of families. We then apply the criterion to obtain that some important and typical families of Calabi-Yau varieties are rigid, for examples., Lefschetz pencils of Calabi-Yau varieties, {\it strongly degenerated} families (not only for families of Calabi-Yau varieties), families of Calabi-Yau varieties admitting a degeneration with {\it maximal unipotent monodromy}.
These are expository notes from the 2008 Srni Winter School. They have two purposes: (1) to give a quick introduction to exterior differential systems (EDS), which is a collection of techniques for determining local existence to systems of partial differential equations, and (2) to give an exposition of recent work (joint with C. Robles) on the study of the Fubini-Griffiths-Harris rigidity of rational homogeneous varieties, which also involves an advance in the EDS technology.
A differential operator $D$ commuting with an $S^1$-action is said to be rigid if the non-constant Fourier coefficients of $\ker D$ and $\coker D$ are the same. Somewhat surprisingly, the study of rigid differential operators turns out to be closely related to the problem of defining Chern numbers on singular varieties. This relationship comes into play when we make use of the rigidity properties of the complex elliptic genus--essentially an infinite-dimensional analogue of a Dirac operator. This paper is a survey of rigidity theorems related to the elliptic genus, and their applications to th…
Varieties without deformations are defined over a number field. Several old and new examples of this phenomenon are discussed such as Bely\u ı curves and Shimura varieties. Rigidity is related to maximal Higgs fields which come from variations of Hodge structure. Basic properties for these due to P. Griffiths, W. Schmid, C. Simpson and, on the arithmetic side, to Y. André and I. Satake all play a role. This note tries to give a largely self-contained exposition of these manifold ideas and techniques, presenting, where possible, short new proofs for key results.
We develop the quadratic technique of proving birational rigidity of Fano-Mori fibre spaces over a higher-dimensional base. As an application, we prove birational rigidity of generic fibrations into Fano double spaces of dimension $M\geqslant 4$ and index one over a rationally connected base of dimension at most $\frac12 (M-2)(M-1)$. An estimate for the codimension of the subset of hypersurfaces of a given degree in the projective space with a positive-dimensional singular set is obtained, which is close to the optimal one.
The prolongation g^{(k)} of a linear Lie algebra g \subset gl(V) plays an important role in the study of symmetries of G-structures. Cartan and Kobayashi-Nagano have given a complete classification of irreducible linear Lie algebras g \subset gl(V) with non-zero prolongations. If g is the Lie algebra aut(\hat{S}) of infinitesimal linear automorphisms of a projective variety S \subset \BP V, its prolongation g^{(k)} is related to the symmetries of cone structures, an important example of which is the variety of minimal rational tangents in the study of uniruled projective manifolds. From this p…
Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications（北京数学与应用数学研究所）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；National Research University Higher School of Economics（国立高等经济大学）；Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, Tsinghua University（清华大学丘成桐数学科学中心）
Let $ϕ: X \to \mathbb P^n$ be a double cover branched along a smooth hypersurface of degree $2m, 2 \leq m \leq n-1$. We study the varieties of minimal rational tangents $\mathcal C_x \subset \mathbb P T_x(X)$ at a general point $x$ of $X$. We describe the homogeneous ideal of $\mathcal C_x$ and show that the projective isomorphism type of $\mathcal C_x$ varies in a maximal way as $x$ varies over general points of $X$. Our description of the ideal of $\mathbb C_x$ implies a certain rigidity property of the covering morphism $ϕ$. As an application of this rigidity, we show that any finite morphi…
Geometric structures modeled on rational homogeneous manifolds are studied to characterize rational homogeneous manifolds and to prove their deformation rigidity. To generalize these characterizations and deformation rigidity results to quasihomogeneous varieties, we first study horospherical varieties and geometric structures modeled on horospherical varieties. Using Cartan geometry, we prove that a geometric structure modeled on a smooth projective horospherical variety of Picard number one is locally equivalent to the standard geometric structure when the geometric structure is defined on a…
The rigidity theorem for homotopy invariant presheaves with Witt-transfers on the category of smooth affine varieties over a field $k$ with characteristic not equal to 2 is proved. Namely for such a presheaf $\mathcal F$ the isomorphism $\mathcal F(U)\simeq \mathcal F(x)$ where $U$ is henseliation of a variety at smooth closed point with separable residue field (over $k$) is proved. The rigidity for presheaves $W^i(X\times -)$ where $X$ is smooth variety and $W^i(-)$ are derived Witt-groups ($i\in \mathbb Z/4\mathbb Z$) follows as corollary.
Varieties fibered into del Pezzo surfaces form a class of possible outputs of the minimal model program. It is known that del Pezzo fibrations of degrees $1$ and $2$ over the projective line with smooth total space satisfying the so-called $K^2$-condition are birationally rigid: their Mori fibre space structure is unique. This implies that they are not birational to any Fano varieties, conic bundles or other del Pezzo fibrations. In particular, they are irrational. The families of del Pezzo fibrations with smooth total space of degree $2$ are rather special, as for "most" families a general de…
We use algebraic geometry to study matrix rigidity, and more generally, the complexity of computing a matrix-vector product, continuing a study initiated by Kumar, et. al. We (i) exhibit many non-obvious equations testing for (border) rigidity, (ii) compute degrees of varieties associated to rigidity, (iii) describe algebraic varieties associated to families of matrices that are expected to have super-linear rigidity, and (iv) prove results about the ideals and degrees of cones that are of interest in their own right.
Regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties form an important family of subvarieties of the flag variety, which are often singular and sometimes not normal varieties. Like Schubert varieties, they contain distinguished points called permutation flags. In this paper, we give a combinatorial characterization for a permutation flag of a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety to be a singular point. We also apply this result to characterize regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties which are normal algebraic varieties.
The geometric and algebraic properties of smooth projective varieties with 1-regular structure sheaf are well understood, and the complete classification of these varieties is a classical result. The aim of this paper is to study the next case: smooth projective varieties with 2-regular structure sheaf. First, we give a classification of such varieties using adjunction mappings. Next, under suitable conditions, we study the syzygies of section rings of those varieties to understand the structure of the Betti tables, and show a sharp bound for Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity.
This paper shows algebraically that the Fourier transform preserves the rigidity index of irreducible regular holonomic $\mathcal{D}_{\mathbb{P}^1}[*\{\infty\}]$-modules.
We consider deformations of singular Lagrangian varieties in symplectic spaces. We show the coherence of the direct image sheaves of relative infinitesimal Lagrangian deformations. Using this result, we prove that, under some assumptions, a Lagrangian deformation is analytically rigid provided that this is the case infinitesimally. This gives generalisations of recent results by Colin de Verdière concerning Lagrangian curves.
A picture P of a graph G = (V,E) consists of a point P(v) for each vertex v in V and a line P(e) for each edge e in E, all lying in the projective plane over a field k and subject to containment conditions corresponding to incidence in G. A graph variety is an algebraic set whose points parametrize pictures of G. We consider three kinds of graph varieties: the picture space X(G) of all pictures, the picture variety V(G), an irreducible component of X(G) of dimension 2|V|, defined as the closure of the set of pictures on which all the P(v) are distinct, and the slope variety S(G), obtained by f…
In this article we define a natural tropicalization procedure for closed subsets of log-regular varieties in the case of constant coefficients and study its basic properties. This framework allows us to generalize some of Tevelev's results on tropical compactification as well as Hacking's result on the cohomology of the link of a tropical variety to log-regular varieties.
We extend the so called Chen-Jiang decomposition for pushforward of pluricanocanical bundles to abelian varieties to the setting of klt pairs. We also provide a geometric application of this decomposition.
We know that semi-regular sub-varieties satisfy the variational Hodge conjecture i.e., given a family of smooth projective varieties $π:\mathcal{X} \to B$, a special fiber $\mathcal{X}_o$ and a semi-regular subvariety $Z \subset \mathcal{X}_o$, the cohomology class corresponding to $Z$ remains a Hodge class (as $\mathcal{X}_o$ deforms along $B$) if and only if $Z$ remains an algebraic cycle. In this article, we investigate examples of such sub-varieties. In particular, we prove that any smooth projective variety $Z$ of dimension $n$ is a semi-regular sub-variety of a smooth projective hypersur…
On rational chain connectedness of globally +-regular varieties
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院）；University of Illinois at Chicago（伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校）；Michigan State University（密歇根州立大学）；Peking University（北京大学）
Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity is an important invariant of projective algebraic varieties. A well known conjecture due to Eisenbud and Goto gives a bound for regularity in terms of the codimension and degree. This conjecture is known to be true for curves (Gruson-Lazarsfeld-Peskine) and smooth surfaces (Pinkham, Lazarsfeld), but not in general. The purpose of this paper is to give new bounds for the regularity of smooth varieties in dimensions 3 and 4 that are only slightly worse than the optimal ones suggested by the conjecture. Our method yields new bounds up to dimension 14, but as they ge…
We prove that the Picard group of a regular simply connected variety over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic is finitely generated. The main difficulty to overcome is the unavailability of resolution of singularities. From this we deduce that in positive characteristic there exist no nontrivial stratified line bundles on such a variety, and we present a complex analog.
Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group over the field of complex numbers. Fix a maximal torus $T$ and a Borel subgroup $B$ of $G$ containing $T$. Let $w$ be an element of the Weyl group $W$ of $G$, and let $Z(\tilde w)$ be the Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen (BSDH) variety corresponding to a reduced expression $\tilde w$ of $w$ with respect to the data $(G, B, T)$. In this article we give complete characterization of the expressions $\tilde w$ such that the corresponding BSDH variety $Z(\tilde w)$ is Fano or weak Fano. As a consequence we prove vanishing theorems of the cohomology of tangent bundle…
We prove a general extrinsic rigidity theorem for homogeneous varieties in $\mathbb{CP}^N$. The theorem is used to show that the adjoint variety of a complex simple Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ (the unique minimal G orbit in $\mathbb{P}\mathfrak{g}$) is extrinsically rigid to third order. In contrast, we show that the adjoint variety of $SL_3\mathbb{C}$, and the Segre product $\mathit{Seg}(\mathbb{P}^1\times \mathbb{P}^n)$, both varieties with osculating sequences of length two, are flexible at order two. In the $SL_3\mathbb{C}$ example we discuss the relationship between the extrinsic projectiv…
