Let $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $2$. We consider the commuting variety and the commuting nilpotent variety of the Lie algebra $\mathfrak{sp}_{2n}$, namely the sets $\mathcal{C}_2(\mathfrak{sp}_{2n})=\{ (x,y) \in \mathfrak{sp}_{2n} \times \mathfrak{sp}_{2n} \mid [x,y]=0\}$ and $\mathcal{C}_2^{\text{nil}}(\mathfrak{sp}_{2n})=\{ (x,y) \in \mathfrak{sp}_{2n} \times \mathfrak{sp}_{2n} \mid x,y \text{ nilpotent, } [x,y]=0\}$ and prove that they are both irreducible, of dimensions $\dim(\mathfrak{sp}_{2n}) + 2n$ and $\dim(\mathfrak{sp}_{2n}) + n-1$, respectively.
We study certain "σ-commuting varieties" associated with a pair of commuting involutions of a semisimple Lie algebra $\g$. The usual commuting variety of $\g$ and commuting varieties related to one involution are particular cases of our construction. We develop a general theory of σ-commuting varieties and point out some cases, when they have especially good properties. We show that, for a special choice of commuting involutions, the σ-commuting variety is isomorphic to the commuting variety of a simple Jordan algebra. As a by-product of our theory, we show that if $J$ is the Jordan algebra of…
The generalized commuting and isospectral commuting varieties of a reductive Lie algebra have been introduced in a preceding article. In this note, it is proved that their normalizations are Gorenstein with rational singularities. Moreover, their canonical modules are free of rank 1. In particular, the usual commuting variety is Gorenstein with rational singularities and its canonical module is free of rank 1.
Here we prove that a commuting variety associated with a symmetric pair (g, g_0) is irreducible for (so_{n+m}, so_n + so_m) and reducible for (gl_{n+m}, {gl}_n + gl_m) with n>m, (so_{2n}, gl_n) with odd n, (E_6, {so}_{10} + k).
We study the anti-commuting variety which consists of pairs of anti-commuting $n\times n$ matrices. We provide an explicit description of its irreducible components and their dimensions. The GIT quotient of the anti-commuting variety with respect to the conjugation action of $GL_n$ is shown to be of pure dimension $n$. We also show the semi-nilpotent anti-commuting variety (in which one matrix is required to be nilpotent) is of pure dimension $n^2$ and describe its irreducible components.
We consider the conjugation-action of an arbitrary upper-block parabolic subgroup of the general linear group on the variety of nilpotent matrices in its Lie algebra. Lie-theoretically, it is natural to wonder about the number of orbits of this action. We translate the setup to a representation-theoretic one and obtain a finiteness criterion which classifies all actions with only a finite number of orbits over an arbitrary infinite field. These results are applied to commuting varieties and nested punctual Hilbert schemes.
We obtain a series of new results on the problem of irreducibility of commuting varieties associated with symmetric pairs or, in other words, $Z_2$-graded simple Lie algebras. In particular, we present many examples of reducible commuting varieties and show that the number of irreducible components can be arbitrarily large.
It is known that the variety of pairs of n x n commuting upper triangular matrices isn't a complete intersection for infinitely many values of n; we show that there exists m such that this happens if and only if n > m. We also show that m < 18 and that it could be found by determining the dimension of the variety of pairs of commuting strictly upper triangular matrices. Then we define a natural map from the variety of pairs of commuting n x n matrices onto a subvariety defined by linear equations of the grassmannian of subspaces of codimension 2 of a vector space of dimension n x n.
It is known that the variety parametrizing pairs of commuting nilpotent matrices is irreducible and that this provides a proof of the irreducibility of the punctual Hilbert scheme in the plane. We extend this link to the nilpotent commuting variety of parabolic subalgebras of $M\_n(\K)$ and to the punctual nested Hilbert scheme. By this method, we obtain a lower bound on the dimension of these moduli spaces. We characterize the numerical conditions under which they are irreducible. In some reducible cases, we describe the irreducible components and their dimension.
The nilpotent cone of a reductive Lie algebra has a desingularization given by thecotangent bundle of the flag variety. Analogously, the nullcone of a cartesianpower of the algebra has a desingularization given by a vector bundle over theflag variety. As for the nullcone, the subvariety of elements whose componentsare in a same Borel subalgebra, has a desingularization given by a vector bundle overthe flag variety. In this note, some properties of these varieties are given. Forthe study of the commuting variety, the analogous variety to the flag variety isthe closure in the Grassmannian of the…
Let g be a semisimple Lie algebra of finite dimension. The nullcone N of g is the set of (x,y) in g x g such that x and y are nilpotents and are in the same Borel sualgebra. The main result of this paper is that N is a closed and irreducible subvariety of g x g, its normalisation has rational singularities and its normalization morphism is bijective.
We prove a formula, originally due to Feit and Fine, for the class of the commuting variety in the Grothendieck group of varieties. Our method, which uses a power structure on the Grothendieck group of stacks, allows us to prove several refinements and generalizations of the Feit-Fine formula. Our main application is to motivic Donaldson-Thomas theory.
We indicate smooth real commuting matrix differential operators whose eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are parametrized by two-dimensional principally polarized abelian varieties.
We prove that the singular locus of the commuting variety of a noncommutative reductive Lie algebra is contained in the irregular locus and we compute the codimension of the latter. We prove that one of the irreducible components of the irregular locus has codimension 4. This yields the lower bound of the codimension of the singular locus, in particular, implies that it is at least 2. We also prove that the commuting variety is rational.
Borrowing a reduction principle to a recent preprint of G. Faltings (toroidal resolution of some matrix singularities, 1999), we use Lafforgue's compactification of PGL_r^{N+1}/PGL_r to construct a canonical log-smooth toroidal resolution for the bad reduction in a prime p of Shimura varieties of unitary and symplectic type with parahoric level structures at p. Using this result, non-canonical semi-stable resolutions over Z_p[p^{1/ν}] can be derived.
Let $\N_n$ be the set of nilpotent $n$ by $n$ matrices over an algebraically closed field $k$. For each $r\ge 2$, let $C_r(\N_n)$ be the variety consisting of all pairwise commuting $r$-tuples of nilpotent matrices. It is well-kown that $C_2(\N_n)$ is irreducible for every $n$. We study in this note the reducibility of $C_r(\N_n)$ for various values of $n$ and $r$. In particular it will be shown that the reducibility of $C_r(\mathfrak{gl}_n)$, the variety of commuting $r$-tuples of $n$ by $n$ matrices, implies that of $C_r(\N_n)$ under certain condition. Then we prove that $C_r(\N_n)$ is reduc…
The commuting variety of matrices over a given field is a well-studied object in linear algebra and algebraic geometry. As a set, it consists of all pairs of square matrices with entries in that field that commute with one another. In this paper we generalise the commuting variety by using the commuting distance of matrices. We show that over an algebraically closed field, each of our sets does indeed form a variety. We compute the dimension of the distance-$2$ commuting variety and characterize its irreducible components. We also work over other fields, showing that the distance-$2$ commuting…
This survey article explains the construction of Rapoport-Zink local models and their use in understanding various questions relating to the singularities in the reduction modulo p of certain Shimura varieties with parahoric level structure at p.
Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraically closed field $k$, and assume that the characteristic of $k$ is zero or a pretty good prime for $G$. Let $P$ be a parabolic subgroup of $G$ and let $\mathfrak p$ be the Lie algebra of $P$. We consider the commuting variety $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p) = \{(X,Y) \in \mathfrak p \times \mathfrak p \mid [X,Y] = 0\}$. Our main theorem gives a necessary and sufficient condition for irreducibility of $\mathcal C(\mathfrak p)$ in terms of the modality of the adjoint action of $P$ on the nilpotent variety of $\mathfrak p$. As a conseque…
Let G be a connected real reductive algebraic group, and let K be a maximal compact subgroup of G. We prove that the conjugation orbit space Hom(Z^{2d},K)/K is a strong deformation retract of the space Hom(Z^{2d},G)/G of equivalence classes of representations of Z^{2d} into G. This is proved by showing that the homotopy type of the moduli space of principal G-Higgs bundles of vanishing rational characteristic classes on a complex abelian variety of dimension d depends only on K.
Consider the moment map $μ\colon T^*(\mathfrak{p} \times \mathbb{C}^n) \to \mathfrak{p}^*$ for a parabolic subalgebra $\mathfrak{p}$ of $\mathfrak{gl}_n(\mathbb{C})$. We prove that the preimage of $0$ under $μ$ is a complete intersection when $\mathfrak{p}$ has finitely many $P$-orbits, where $P\subseteq \operatorname{GL}_n(\mathbb{C})$ is a parabolic subgroup such that $\operatorname{Lie}(P) = \mathfrak{p}$, and give an explicit description of the irreducible components. This allows us to study nearby fibers of $μ$ as they are equidimensional, and one may also construct GIT quotients $μ^{-1}(…
We investigate the variety of commuting matrices. We classify its components for any number of matrices of size at most 7. We prove that starting from quadruples of size 8 matrices, this scheme has generically nonreduced components, while up to degree 7 it is generically reduced. Our approach is to recast the problem as deformations of modules and generalize an array of methods: apolarity, duality and Białynicki-Birula decompositions to this setup. We include a thorough review of our methods to make the paper self-contained and accessible to both algebraic and linear-algebraic communities. Our…
In this paper we show that an affine space is determined by the abstract group structure of its group of regular automorphisms in the category of connected affine varieties. To prove this we study commutative subgroups of the group of automorphisms of affine varieties.
Given an nxn nilpotent matrix over an algebraically closed field K, we prove some properties of the set of all the nxn nilpotent matrices over K which commute with it. Then we give a proof of the irreducibility of the variety of all the pairs (A,B) of nxn nilpotent matrices over K if either char K = 0 or char K isn't less than n/2. We get as a consequence a proof of the irreducibility of the local Hilbert scheme of n points of a smooth algebraic surface over K with the previous condition on char K.
Let G be a connected reductive complex affine algebraic group, and let X denote the moduli space of G-valued representations of a rank r free group. We first characterize the singularities in X, extending a theorem of Richardson and proving a Mumford-type result about topological singularities; this resolves conjectures of Florentino-Lawton. In particular, we compute the codimension of the orbifold singular locus using facts about Borel-de Siebenthal subgroups. We then use the codimension bound to calculate higher homotopy groups of the smooth locus of X, proving conjectures of Florentino-Lawt…
Suppose F=W(k)[1/p] where W(k) is the ring of Witt vectors with coefficients in algebraically closed field k of characteristic p>2. We construct integral theory of p-adic semi-stable representations of the absolute Galois group of F with Hodge-Tate weights from [0,p). This modification of Breuil's theory results in the following application in the spirit of Shafarevich's Conjecture. If Y is a projective algebraic variety over the field of rational numbers with good reduction modulo all primes different from 3 and semi-stable reduction modulo 3 then for the Hodge numbers of the complexification…
Let $N(d,n)$ be the variety of all $d$-tuples of commuting nilpotent $n\times n$ matrices. It is well-known that $N(d,n)$ is irreducible if $d=2$, if $n\le 3$ or if $d=3$ and $n=4$. On the other hand $N(3,n)$ is known to be reducible for $n\ge 13$. We study in this paper the reducibility of $N(d,n)$ for various values of $d$ and $n$. In particular, we prove that $N(d,n)$ is reducible for all $d,n\ge 4$. In the case $d=3$, we show that it is irreducible for $n\le 6$.
Several algebro-geometric properties of commutative rings of partial differential operators as well as several geometric constructions are investigated. In particular, we show how to associate a geometric data by a commutative ring of partial differential operators, and we investigate the properties of these geometric data. This construction is similar to the construction of a formal module of Baker-Akhieser functions. On the other hand, there is a recent generalization of Sato's theory which belongs to the third author of this paper. We compare both approaches to the commutative rings of part…
We observe that the degree of the commuting variety and other related varieties occur as coefficients in the leading eigenvector of an integrable loop model based on the Brauer algebra.
This paper addresses weak approximation for rationally connected varieties defined over the function field of a curve, especially at places of bad reduction. Our approach entails analyzing the rational connectivity of the smooth locus of singular reductions of the variety. As an application, we prove weak approximation for cubic surfaces with square-free discriminant.
Let $E$ be a quadratic imaginary field and let $p$ be a prime which is inert in $E.$ We study three types of Picard modular surfaces in positive characteristic $p$ and the morphisms between them. The first Picard surface, denoted $S$, parametrizes triples $(A,ϕ,ι)$ comprised of an abelian threefold $A$ with an action $ι$ of the ring of integers $\mathcal{O}_{E}$, and a principal polarization $ϕ$. The second surface, $S_{0}(p)$, parametrizes, in addition, a suitably restricted choice of a subgroup $H\subset A[p]$ of rank $p^{2}$. The third Picard surface, $\widetilde{S}$, parametrizes triples $…
In this paper we find the explicit formulas of two dimensional commuting ($2\times 2$)-matrix differential operators which were introduced by Nakayashiki. The common eigen functions and eigen values of these operators are parametrized by the points of principally polarized Abelian varieties.
We construct new examples of multidimensional commuting matrix differential operators and a multidimensional analog of the Kadomtsev--Petviashvili hierarchy.
Let $X$ be an affine algebraic variety endowed with an action of complexity one of an algebraic torus $\mathbb{T}$. It is well known that homogeneous locally nilpotent derivations on the algebra of regular functions $\mathbb{K}[X]$ can be described in terms of proper polyhedral divisors corresponding to $\mathbb{T}$-variety $X$. We prove that homogeneous locally nilpotent derivations commute if an only if some combinatorial criterion holds. These results are used to describe actions of unipotent groups of dimension two on affine $\mathbb{T}$-varieties.
A conjecture of J. Huh and B. Sturmfels predicts that the sign of the Euler characteristic of a complex very affine variety depends only on the parity of the dimension. The conjecture is true for locally complete intersections. Beyond this case, we construct counterexamples with arbitrarily bad failure.
Let I be a conjugation-invariant ideal in the complex polynomial ring with variables z_1,...,z_n and their conjugates. The ideal I has the Quillen property if every real valued, strictly positive polynomial on the real zero set of I in C^n is a sum of hermitian squares modulo I. We first relate the Quillen property to the archimedean property from real algebra. Using hereditary calculus, we then quantize and show that the Quillen property implies the subnormality of commuting tuples of Hilbert space operators satisfying the identities in I. In the finite rank case we give a complete geometric …
Deligne's weight-monodromy conjecture gives control over the poles of local factors of L-functions of varieties at places of bad reduction. His proof in characteristic p was a step in his proof of the generalized Weil conjectures. Scholze developed the theory of perfectoid spaces to transfer Deligne's proof to characteristic 0, proving the conjecture for complete intersections in toric varieties. Building on Scholze's techniques, we prove the weight-monodromy conjecture for complete intersections in abelian varieties.
A Mukai variety is a Fano n-fold of index n-2. In this paper we study the fundamental divisor of a Mukai variety with at worst log terminal singularities. The main result is a complete classification of log terminal Mukai varieties which have not good divisors, examples of "bad" varieties are given. In such a way we also give a shorter proof of Mukai Conjecture, solved in our previous paper alg-geom/9611024.
In this paper we adapt some techniques developed for K3 surfaces, to study the geometry of a family of projective varieties in $\Pl_K^2 \times \Pl_K^2 \times \Pl_K^2$ defined as the intersection of a form of degree $(2,2,2)$ and a form of degree $(1,1,1)$. Members of the family will be equipped with dominant rational self-maps and we will study the actions of those maps on divisors and compute the first dynamical degrees of the composition of any pair.
We confirm, to some extent, the belief that a projective variety X has the largest number (relative to the dimension of X) of independent commuting automorphisms of positive entropy only when X is birational to a complex torus or a quotient of a torus. We also include an addendum to an early paper though it is not used in the present paper.
Theorem: If W is a smooth complex projective variety with h^1 (O-script_W) = 0, then a sufficiently ample smooth divisor X on W cannot be a hyperplane section of a Calabi-Yau variety, unless W is itself a Calabi-Yau. Corollary: A smooth hypersurface of degree d in P^n (n >= 2) is a hyperplane section of a Calabi-Yau variety iff n+2 <= d <= 2n+2. The method is to construct out of the variety W a universal family of all varieties Z for which X is a hyperplane section with normal bundle K_X, and examine the "bad" singularities of such Z. A motivation is to show many curves cannot be divisors on a…
We study higher order determinantal varieties obtained by considering generic $m\times n$ ($m \le n$) matrices over rings of the form $F[t]/(t^k)$, and for some fixed $r$, setting the coefficients of powers of $t$ of all $r \times r$ minors to zero. These varieties can be interpreted as generalized tangent bundles over the classical determinantal varieties; a special case of these varieties first appeared in a problem in commuting matrices. We show that when $r = m$, the varieties are irreducible, but when $r < m$, these varieties have at least $\lfloor {k/2}\rfloor + 1$ components. In fact, w…
An affine varieties with an action of a semisimple group $G$ is called "small" if every non-trivial $G$-orbit in $X$ is isomorphic to the orbit of a highest weight vector. Such a variety $X$ carries a canonical action of the multiplicative group $\mathbb{K}^*$ commuting with the $G$-action. We show that $X$ is determined by the $\mathbb{K}^*$-variety $X^U$ of fixed points under a maximal unipotent subgroups $U$ of $G$. Moreover, if $X$ is smooth, then $X$ is a $G$-vector bundle over the quotient $X// G$. If $G$ is of type $A_n$ ($n>1$), $C_n$, $E_6$, $E_7$ or $E_8$, we show that all affine $G$…
Constructing families of abelian varieties of $\text{GL}_2$-type over $4$-punctured complex projective line via $p$-adic Hodge theory and Langlands correspondence and application to algebraic solutions of Painleve VI equation
We investigate the bad reduction of certain Shimura varieties (associated to the symplectic group). More precisely, we look at a model of the Shimura variety at a prime p, with parahoric level structure at p. We show that this model is flat, as conjectured by Rapoport and Zink, and that its special fibre is reduced.
A multiplication on the 2D cohomological Hall algebra (CoHA) of the variety of commuting matrices was described by Schiffman and Vasserot. This construction can be generalised to other varieties that exist as the zero-locus of a function on a smooth ambient variety. On the 2D CoHA of the character variety of the fundamental group of a genus $g$ Riemann surface, we compare the multiplication induced by the standard presentation and that of a brane tiling presentation.
We describe a higher dimensional generalization of Ramanujan's differential equations satisfied by the Eisenstein series $E_2$, $E_4$, and $E_6$. This will be obtained geometrically as follows. For every integer $g\ge 1$, we construct a moduli stack $\mathcal{B}_g$ over $\mathbf{Z}$ classifying principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension $g$ equipped with a suitable additional structure: a symplectic-Hodge basis of its first algebraic de Rham cohomology. We prove that $\mathcal{B}_g$ is a smooth Deligne-Mumford stack over $\mathbf{Z}$ of relative dimension $2g^2 + g$ and that $\mathca…
Let $G$ be a connected reductive affine algebraic group defined over the complex numbers, and $K\subset G$ be a maximal compact subgroup. Let $X , Y$ be irreducible smooth complex projective varieties and $f: X \rightarrow Y$ an algebraic morphism, such that $π_1(Y)$ is virtually nilpotent and the homomorphism $f_* : π_1(X) \rightarrowπ_1(Y)$ is surjective. Define $$ {\mathcal R }^f(π_1(X),\, G)\,=\, \{ρ\, \in\, \text{Hom}(π_1(X),\, G)\, \mid\, A\circρ\ \text{ factors through }~ f_*\}\, , $$ $$ {\mathcal R }^f(π_1(X),\, K)\,=\, \{ρ\, \in\, \text{Hom}(π_1(X),\, K)\, \mid\, A\circρ\ \text{ facto…
