The space of n distinct points and a disjoint parameterized hyperplane in projective d-space up to projectivity---equivalently, configurations of n distinct points in affine d-space up to translation and homothety---has a beautiful compactification introduced by Chen-Gibney-Krashen. This variety, constructed inductively using the apparatus of Fulton-MacPherson configuration spaces, is a parameter space of certain pointed rational varieties whose dual intersection complex is a rooted tree. This generalizes $\overline{M}_{0,n}$ and shares many properties with it. In this paper, we prove that the normalization of the Chow quotient of $(\mathbb{P}^d)^n$ by the diagonal action of the subgroup of projectivities fixing a hyperplane, pointwise, is isomorphic to this Chen-Gibney-Krashen space $T_{d,n}$. This is a non-reductive analogue of Kapranov's famous quotient construction of $\overline{M}_{0,n}$, and indeed as a special case we show that $\overline{M}_{0,n}$ is the Chow quotient of $(\mathbb{P}^1)^{n-1}$ by an action of a semidirect product of the additive and multiplicative group.
We show that the moduli space of stable n-pointed rational curves can be flatly degenerated to a projective toric variety. We arrive at this by showing that the Chow quotients of the Grassmannians admit toric degenerations, which in turn, follows from a theorem that we prove for toric degenerations of more general Chow quotients. Along the way, we also argued that GIT quotient of a flat family is again flat. In particular, all GIT quotients of flag varieties by maximal tori can be flatly degenerated to projective toric varieties ([9] and [12]).
We consider torus actions on Mori dream spaces and ask whether the associated Chow quotient is again a Mori dream space and, if so, what does its Cox ring look like. We provide general tools for the study of these problems and give solutions for k*-actions on smooth quadrics.
We give explicit equations for the Chow and Hilbert quotients of a projective scheme X by the action of an algebraic torus T in an auxiliary toric variety. As a consequence we provide GIT descriptions of these canonical quotients, and obtain other GIT quotients of X by variation of GIT quotient. We apply these results to find equations for the moduli space \bar{M}_{0,n} of stable genus zero n-pointed curves as a subvariety of a smooth toric variety defined via tropical methods.
Let $X$ be a projective normal toric variety and $T_0$ a rank one subtorus of the defining torus of $X$. We show that the normalization of the Chow quotient $X//T_0$, in the sense of Kapranov-Sturmfels-Zelevinsky, coarsely represents the moduli space of stable log maps to $X$ with discrete data given by $T_0\subset X$.
The literature on maximal torus orbits in the Grassmannian is vast; in this paper we initiate a program to extend this to diagonal subtori. Our main focus is generalizing portions of Kapranov's seminal work on Chow quotient compactifications of these orbit spaces. This leads naturally to discrete polymatroids, generalizing the matroidal framework underlying Kapranov's results. By generalizing the Gelfand-MacPherson isomorphism, these Chow quotients are seen to compactify spaces of arrangements of parameterized linear subspaces, and a generalized Gale duality holds here. A special case is birat…
We study the Fulton-Macpherson operational Chow rings of good moduli spaces of properly stable, smooth, Artin stacks. Such spaces are étale locally isomorphic to geometric invariant theory quotients of affine schemes, and are therefore natural extensions of GIT quotients. Our main result is that, with rational coefficients, every operational class can be represented by a so-called topologically strong cycle on the corresponding stack. Moreover, this cycle is unique modulo rational equivalence on the stack. Using out methods, we prove that if $X$ is the good moduli space of a properly stable, s…
We establish a method for calculating the Poincaré series of moduli spaces constructed as quotients of smooth varieties by suitable non-reductive group actions; examples of such moduli spaces include moduli spaces of unstable vector or Higgs bundles on a smooth projective curve, with a Harder-Narasimhan type of length two. To do so, we first prove a result concerning the smoothness of fixed point sets for suitable non-reductive group actions on smooth varieties. This enables us to prove that quotients of smooth varieties by such non-reductive group actions, which can be constructed using Non-R…
Given a projective algebraic variety $X$, let $Π_p(X)$ denote the monoid of effective algebraic equivalence classes of effective algebraic cycles on $X$. The $p$-th Euler-Chow series of $X$ is an element in the formal monoid-ring $Z[[Π_p(X)]]$ defined in terms of Euler characteristics of the Chow varieties $\cvpd{p}α{X}$ of $X$, with $α\inΠ_p(X)$. We provide a systematic treatment of such series, and give projective bundle formulas which generalize previous results by B. Lawson and S.S.Yau and Elizondo. The techniques used involve the Chow quotients introduced by Kapranov, and this allows the …
This paper generalizes the classical theory of Newton polygons from the case of general linear groups to the case of split reductive groups. It also gives a root-theoretic formula for dimensions of Newton strata in the adjoint quotients of reductive groups.
We provide a direct proof, valid in arbitrary characteristic, of the result originally proven by Kapranov over $\mathbb{C}$, that the Hilbert and Chow quotients $(\mathbb{P}^1)^n//PGL2$ are isomorphic to $\overline{M}_{0,n}$. In both cases this is done by explicitly constructing the universal family and then showing that the induced morphism is an isomorphism onto its image. The proofs of these results in many ways reduce to the case $n = 4$; in an appendix we outline a formalism of this phenomenon relating to certain operads.
We prove a formula for Chow groups of $Quot$-schemes which resolve degeneracy loci of a map between vector bundles, under expected dimension conditions. This result provides a unified way to understand known formulae for various geometric situations such as blowups, Cayley's trick, projectivizations, Grassmannian bundles, flops from Springer type resolutions, as well as provide new phenomena such as formulae for Grassmannain type flips/flops and virtual flips. We also give applications to blowups of determinantal ideals, moduli spaces of linear series on curves, and Hilbert schemes of points o…
In this paper we study actions of reductive groups on affine spaces. We prove that there is a fan structure on the space of characters of the group, which parameterizes the possible invariant quotients. In the second half of the paper we study various geometrical properties of the quotients: we compute their Chow ring and the cohomology ring (in case we work over the complex numbers), both with rational coefficients. Actually, the cycle map turns out to be an isomorphism. Further, we construct families of such quotients over reduced base schemes, and compute again the Chow and the cohomology r…
The aim of this note is to announce some results on the GIT problem for the Hilbert and Chow scheme of curves of degree d and genus g in P^{d-g}, whose full details will appear in a subsequent paper. In particular, we extend the previous results of L. Caporaso up to d>4(2g-2) and we observe that this is sharp. In the range 2(2g-2)<d<7/2(2g-2), we get a complete new description of the GIT quotient. As a corollary, we get a new compactification of the universal Jacobian over the moduli space of pseudo-stable curves.
Given a suitable action on a complex projective variety X of a non-reductive affine algebraic group H, this paper considers how to choose a reductive group G containing H and a projective completion of G x_H X which is a reductive envelope in the sense of math.AG/0703131. In particular it studies the family of examples given by moduli spaces of hypersurfaces in the weighted projective plane P(1,1,2) obtained as quotients by linear actions of the (non-reductive) automorphism group of P(1,1,2).
We consider 3-dimensional toric Calabi-Yau singularities which arise as cones over the Chow quotient for a torus acting on projective space. We show that the Chow forms of the closures of the codimension 2 orbits can very easily be written down from the quiver with superpotential which corresponds with the given CY3 singularity under the correspondence between CY3 singularities and quivers with superpotential which is part of the AdS/CFT correspondence in physics. We also prove that this provides a new method for computing the principal A-determinant in the theory of Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsk…
We consider Kapranov's Chow quotient compactification of the moduli space of ordered n-tuples of hyperplanes in P^{r-1} in linear general position. For r=2 this is canonically identified with the Grothendieck-Knudsen compactification of M_{0,n} which has among others the nice properties 1) Modular meaning: stable pointed rational curves 2) Canonical description of limits of one parameter degenerations 3) Natural Mori theoretic meaning: log canonical compactification. We prove (1-2) generalize naturally to all (r,n), but that (3), which we view as the deepest, fails except possibly in the cases…
We extend the methods of geometric invariant theory to actions of non--reductive groups in the case of homomorphisms between decomposable sheaves whose automorphism groups are non--reductive. Given a linearization of the natural action of the group $\Aut(E)\times\Aut(F)$ on Hom(E,F), a homomorphism is called stable if its orbit with respect to the unipotent radical is contained in the stable locus with respect to the natural reductive subgroup of the automorphism group. We encounter effective numerical conditions for a linearization such that the corresponding open set of semi-stable homomorph…
For a smooth quasi-projective scheme $X$ over a field $k$ with an action of a reductive group, we establish a spectral sequence connecting the equivariant and the ordinary higher Chow groups of $X$. For $X$ smooth and projective, we show that this spectral sequence degenerates, leading to an explicit relation between the equivariant and the ordinary higher Chow groups. We obtain several applications to algebraic $K$-theory. We show that for a reductive group $G$ acting on a smooth projective scheme $X$, the forgetful map $K^G_i(X) \to K_i(X)$ induces an isomorphism $K^G_i(X)/{I_G K^G_i(X)} \co…
This paper studies the canonical Chow quotient of a smooth projective variety by a reductive algebraic group. The main purpose is to give some topological interpretations and characterization of Chow quotient which have the advantage to be more intuitive and geometric. This is to be done over the field of complex numbers and in the languages that are familiar to topologists and differential geometers. More precisely, the main observation of this paper is that, over the field of complex numbers, the Chow quotient admits symplectic and other topological interpretations, namely, symplectically, t…
We show the existence of a regular universal quotient as a smooth commutative algebraic group of the Chow group of 0-cycles on a projective reduced variety, and give over the field of complex numbers an analytic description of it. This generalizes the classical theory of the Albanese. The Chow group of 0-cycles is then isomorphic to this smooth algebraic group if and only if it is finite dimensional in the sense of Mumford. This generalizes the classical theorem of Roitman.
Let X be a locally symmetric variety. Let EBS(X) and TorE(X) denote its excentric Borel-Serre and excentric toroidal compactifications, resp. We determine their least common modification and use it to prove a conjecture of Goresky and Tai concerning canonical extensions of homogeneous vector bundles. In the process, we see that EBS(X) and TorE(X) are homotopy equivalent.
We define the Chow ring of the classifying space of a linear algebraic group. In all the examples where we can compute it, such as the symmetric groups and the orthogonal groups, it is isomorphic to a natural quotient of the complex cobordism ring of the classifying space, a topological invariant. We apply this to get torsion information on the Chow groups of varieties defined as quotients by finite groups. This generalizes Atiyah and Hirzebruch's use of such varieties to give counterexamples to the Hodge conjecture with integer coefficients.
We introduce a certain compactification of the space of projective configurations i.e. orbits of the group $PGL(k)$ on the space of $n$ - tuples of points in $P^{k-1}$ in general position. This compactification differs considerably from Mumford's geometric invariant theory quotient. It is obtained by considering limit position (in the Chow variety) of the closures of generic orbits. The same result will be obtained if we study orbits of the maximal torus on the Grassmannian $G(k,n)$. We study in detail the closures of the torus orbits and their "visible contours" which are Veronese varieties i…
We study the semi-decomposable invariants of a split semisimple group and their extension to a split reductive group by using the torsion in the codimension $2$ Chow groups of a product of Severi-Brauer varieties. In particular, for any $n\geq 2$ we completely determine the degree $3$ invariants of a split semisimple group, the quotient of $(\operatorname{\mathbf{SL}}_{2})^{n}$ by its maximal central subgroup, as well as of the corresponding split reductive group. We also provide an example illustrating that a modification of our method can be applied to find the semi-decomposable invariants o…
We study linear actions of algebraic groups on smooth projective varieties X. A guiding goal for us is to understand the cohomology of "quotients" under such actions, by generalizing (from reductive to non-reductive group actions) existing methods involving Mumford's geometric invariant theory (GIT). We concentrate on actions of unipotent groups H, and define sets of stable points X^s and semistable points X^{ss}, often explicitly computable via the methods of reductive GIT, which reduce to the standard definitions due to Mumford in the case of reductive actions. We compare these with definiti…
We find a new presentation of the stack of hyperelliptic curves of odd genus as a quotient stack and we use it to compute its integral Chow ring by means of equivariant intersection theory.
We prove that good quotients of algebraic varieties with 1-rational singularities also have 1-rational singularities. This refines a result of Boutot on rational singularities of good quotients.
The wall-and-chamber structure of the dependence of the reductive GIT quotient on the choice of linearisation is well known. In this article, we first give a brief survey of recent results in non-reductive GIT, which apply when the unipotent radical is 'graded'. We then examine the dependence of these non-reductive quotients on the linearisation and an additional parameter, the choice of one-parameter subgroup grading the unipotent radical, and arrive at a picture similar to the reductive one.
In this article we review the question of constructing geometric quotients of actions of linear algebraic groups on irreducible varieties over algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero, in the spirit of Mumford's geometric invariant theory (GIT). The article surveys some recent work on geometric invariant theory and quotients of varieties by linear algebraic group actions, as well as background material on linear algebraic groups, Mumford's GIT and some of the challenges that the non-reductive setting presents. The earlier work of two of the authors in the setting of unipotent group a…
Motivated by constructing moduli spaces of unstable objects, we use new ideas in non-reductive GIT to construct quotients by parabolic group actions. For moduli problems with semistable moduli spaces constructed by reductive GIT, we consider associated instability (or HKKN) stratifications, which are often closed related to Harder-Narasimhan stratifications, and construct quotients of the unstable strata under various stabiliser assumptions by further developing ideas of non-reductive GIT. Our approach is to construct parabolic quotients in stages, in order for the required stabiliser assumpti…
We give a presentation for the stack of rational curves with at most 1 node as the quotient by GL(3) of an open set in a 6-dimensional irreducible representation. We then use equivariant intersection theory to calculate the integral Chow ring of this stack.
Consider an algebraic action of a connected complex reductive algebraic group on a complex polarized projective variety. In this paper, we first introduce the nilpotent quotient, the quotient of the polarized projective variety by a maximal unipotent subgroup. Then, we introduce and investigate three induced actions: one by the reductive group, one by a Borel subgroup, and one by a maximal torus, respectively. Our main result is that there are natural correspondences among quotients of these three actions. In the end, we mention a possible application to the moduli spaces of parabolic bundles …
The focus of our paper is on the complex Grassmann manifolds $G_{n,2}$ which appear as one of the fundamental objects in developing the interaction between algebraic geometry and algebraic topology. In his well-known paper Kapranov has proved that the Deligne-Mumford compactification $\overline{\mathcal{M}}(0,n)$ of $n$-pointed curves of genus zero can be realized as the Chow quotient $G_{n,2}\!/\!/(\mathbb{C} ^{\ast})^{n}$. In our recent papers, the constructive description of the orbit space $G_{n,2}/T^n$ has been obtained. In getting this result our notions of the CW-complex of the admissib…
We give another proof that a reductive algebraic group is geometrically reductive. We show that a quotient of the semi-stable locus (by a linear action of a reductive algebraic group on a projective scheme) exists, and from this Haboush's Theorem (Mumford's Conjecture) follows.
This note concerns hyperkähler fourfolds $X$ having a non-symplectic involution $ι$. The Bloch-Beilinson conjectures predict the way $ι$ should act on certain pieces of the Chow groups of $X$. The main result is a verification of this prediction for Fano varieties of lines on certain cubic fourfolds. This has consequences for the Chow ring of the quotient $X/ι$.
In this paper we give smoothness criterions for a good quotient Y of a smooth variety X by a reductive group G. Our results partially answer a question raised by J. Fogarty in the case where G is a finite group. They also give a converse to a theorem of M. Brion, telling that invariant horizontal differential forms on X and differential forms on Y are isomorphic under the assumption that Y is smooth. The proof of our criterion rely on a new description of the dualizing sheaf of Y established in this article.
We show that near closed points with linearly reductive stabilizer, Artin stacks are formally locally quotient stacks by the stabilizer. We conjecture that the statement holds etale locally and we provide some evidence for this conjecture. In particular, we prove that if the stabilizer of a point is linearly reductive, the stabilizer acts algebraically on a miniversal deformation space generalizing results of Pinkham and Rim.
We study the Newton stratification of the adjoint quotient of a connected split reductive group G with simply connected derived group over the field F of formal Laurent series in one variable over the field of complex numbers. Our main result describes the centralizer of a regular semisimple element in G(F) whose image in the adjoint quotient lies in a certain generic subset of a given Newton stratum. Other noteworthy results include analogues of some results of Springer on regular elements of finite reflection groups, as well as a geometric construction of a well known homomorphism from the f…
The symplectic implosion construction of Guillemin, Jeffrey and Sjamaar associates to a Hamiltonian action of a compact group K on a symplectic manifold X its 'imploded cross section'. When X is a complex projective variety and K acts linearly on X, this construction is closely related to geometric invariant theory (GIT) for the action on X of a maximal unipotent subgroup U of the complexification G of K. The aim of this paper is to generalise symplectic implosion to give a symplectic construction for GIT-like quotients by unipotent radicals U of arbitrary parabolic subgroups P of the complex …
This paper applies the decomposition theorem in intersection cohomology to geometric invariant theory quotients, relating the intersection cohomology of the quotient to that of the semistable points for the action. Suppose a connected reductive complex algebraic group $G$ acts linearly on a complex projective variety $X$. We prove that if $1 \to N \to G \to H \to 1$ is a short exact sequence of connected reductive groups, and $X^{ss}$ the set of semistable points for the action of $N$ on $X$, then the $H$-equivariant intersection cohomology of the geometric invariant theory quotient $X^{ss}//N…
We prove finite generation of the algebras of invariants for a class of linear actions of suitable non-reductive groups on projective and affine varieties, and give a geometric construction for their GIT quotients.
Let $X$ be a hyperkähler variety, and let $G$ be a group of finite order non-symplectic automorphisms of $X$. Beauville's conjectural splitting property predicts that each Chow group of $X$ should split in a finite number of pieces. The Bloch-Beilinson conjectures predict how $G$ should act on these pieces of the Chow groups: certain pieces should be invariant under $G$, while certain other pieces should not contain any non-trivial $G$-invariant cycle. We can prove this for two pieces of the Chow groups when $X$ is the Hilbert scheme of a $K3$ surface and $G$ consists of natural automorphisms.…
This article is about hyperkähler fourfolds $X$ admitting a non-symplectic involution $ι$. The Bloch-Beilinson conjectures predict the way $ι$ should act on certain pieces of the Chow groups of $X$. The main result is a verification of this prediction for Fano varieties of lines on certain cubic fourfolds. This has some interesting consequences for the Chow ring of the quotient $X/ι$.
For a derived stack obtained as a quotient of a derived affine scheme by a reductive group, we show that shifted symplectic structures can be characterized by the Cartan-de Rham complex. For non-reductive groups, we also show the analogous statement for Getzler's extension of the Cartan-de Rham complex. Dually, we construct a Cartan model for polyvector fields on global quotients by reductive groups, and show that shifted Poisson structures can be characterized by it.
We compute the integral Chow ring of the quotient stack $[(\mathbb{P}^1)^n/PGL_2]$, which contains $\mathcal{M}_{0,n}$ as a dense open, and determine a natural $\mathbb{Z}$-basis for the Chow ring in terms of certain ordered incidence strata. We further show that all $\mathbb{Z}$-linear relations between the classes of ordered incidence strata arise from an analogue of the WDVV relations in $A^\bullet(\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{0,n})$. Next we compute the classes of unordered incidence strata in the integral Chow ring of the quotient stack $[{\rm Sym}^n\mathbb{P}^1/PGL_2]$ and classify all $\math…
The Chow quotient of a toric variety by a subtorus, as defined by Kapranov-Sturmfels-Zelevinsky, coarsely represents the main component of the moduli space of stable toric varieties with a map to a fixed projective toric variety, as constructed by Alexeev and Brion. We show that, after endowing both spaces with the structure of a logarithmic stack, the resulting spaces are isomorphic. Along the way, we construct the Chow quotient stack and demonstrate several properties that it satisfies.
Let X be an affine T-variety. We study two different quotients for the action of T on X: the toric Chow quotient X/_CT and the toric Hilbert scheme H. We introduce a notion of the main component H_0 of H which parameterizes general T-orbit closures in X and their flat limits. The main component U_0 of the universal family U over H is a preimage of H_0. We define an analogue of a universal family W_X over the main component of the X/_CT. We show that the toric Chow morphism restricted on the main components lifts to a birational projective morphism from U_0 to W_X. The variety W_X also provides…
Motivated by the study of hyperkahler structures in moduli problems and hyperkahler implosion, we initiate the study of non-reductive hyperkahler and algebraic symplectic quotients with an eye towards those naturally tied to projective geometry, like cotangent bundles of blow-ups of linear arrangements of projective space. In the absence of a Kempf-Ness theorem for non-reductive quotients, we focus on constructing algebraic symplectic analogues of additive quotients of affine spaces, and obtain hyperkahler structures on large open subsets of these analogues by comparison with reductive analogu…
