A fundamental goal of algebraic geometry is to do for singular varieties whatever we can do for smooth ones. Intersection homology, for example, directly produces groups associated to any variety which have almost all the properties of the usual homology groups of a smooth variety. Minimal model theory suggests the possibility of working more indirectly by relating any singular variety to a variety which is smooth or nearly so.
Here we use ideas from minimal model theory to define some characteristic numbers for singular varieties, generalizing the Chern numbers of a smooth variety. This was suggested by Goresky and MacPherson as a next natural problem after the definition of intersection homology. We find that only a subspace of the Chern numbers can be defined for singular varieties. A convenient way to describe this subspace is to say that a smooth variety has a fundamental class in complex bordism, whereas a singular variety can at most have a fundamental class in a weaker homology theory, elliptic homology. We use this idea to give an algebro-geometric definition of elliptic homology: ``complex bordism modulo flops equals elliptic homology.''
We generalize some classical results on Chow group of an abelian variety to semiabelian varieties and to motivic (co)homology, using a result of Ancona--Enright-Ward--Huber on a decomposition of the motive of a semiabelian variety in the Voevodsky's category.
We associate to each real algebraic variety a filtered chain complex, the weight complex, which is well-defined up to filtered quasi-isomorphism, and which induces on classical (compactly supported) homology with Z/2 coefficients an analog of the weight filtration for complex algebraic varieties. This complements our previous definition of the weight filtration of Borel-Moore homology.
We construct rational projective 4-dimensional varieties with the property that certain Lawson homology groups tensored with Q are infinite dimensional Q-vector spaces. More generally, each pair of integers p and k, with k\geq 0, p>0, we find a projective variety Y, such that L_pH_{2p+k}(Y) is infinitely generated. We also construct two singular rational projective 3-dimensional varieties Y and Y' with the same homeomorphism type but different Lawson homology groups, specifically L_1H_3(Y) is not isomorphic to L_1H_3(Y')even up to torsion.
It is known that projective minimal models satisfy the celebrated Miyaoka-Yau inequalities. In this article, we extend these inequalities to the set of all smooth, projective and non-uniruled varieties.
We give upper and lower bounds for the order of the top Chern class of the Hodge bundle on the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties.
We give upper and lower bounds for the order of the top Chern class of the Hodge bundle on the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties. We also give a generalization to higher genera of the famous formula $12 λ_1=δ$ for genus 1.
We study the behavior of cohomological support loci of the canonical bundle under derived equivalence of smooth projective varieties. This is achieved by investigating the derived invariance of a generalized version of Hochschild homology. Furthermore, using techniques coming from birational geometry, we establish the derived invariance of the Albanese dimension for varieties having non-negative Kodaira dimension. We apply our machinery to study the derived invariance of the holomorphic Euler characteristic and of certain Hodge numbers for special classes of varieties. Further applications con…
The purpose of this short note is to prove a formula for the Chern-Mather classes of a toric variety in terms of its orbits and the local Euler obstructions at general points of each orbit (Theorem 2). We use the general definition of the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes (see [7]) and their special expression in case of a toric variety (see [2]). As a corollary, we obtain a formula by Matsui-Takeuchi [8, Corollary 1.6]. Alternatively, one could deduce the formula of Theorem 2 from the Matsui-Takeuchi formula, by using our general result [11, Theoreme 3] for the degree of the polar varieties i…
Let $A^{[[n]]}$ denote the $2(n - 1)$-dimensional generalised Kummer variety constructed from the abelian surface $A$. Further, let $X$ be an arbitrary smooth projective surface with $\int_X c_1(X)^2 \neq 0$, and $X^{[k]}$ the Hilbert scheme of zero-dimensional subschemes of $X$ of length $k$. We give a formula which expresses the value of any complex genus on $A^{[[n]]}$ in terms of Chern numbers of the varieties $X^{[k]}$. It is shown by Ellingsrud and Stroemme how to use Bott's residue formula to effectively calculate the Chern numbers of the Hilbert schemes $(\IP^2)^{[k]}$ of points on the…
We give a generalization to higher genera of the famous formula $12 λ=δ$ for genus 1. We also compute the classes of certain strata in the Satake compactification as elements of the push down of the tautological ring.
A theorem of Batyrev's asserts that if two nonsingular varieties V,W are birational, and their canonical bundles agree after pull-back to a resolution of indeterminacies of a birational map between them, then the Betti numbers of V and W coincide. We prove that, in the same hypotheses, the total homology Chern classes of V and W are push-forwards of the same class in the Chow group of the resolution. For example, it follows that the push-forward of the total Chern class of a crepant resolution of a singular variety is independent of the resolution.
We examine the tangent groups at the identity, and more generally the formal completions at the identity, of the Chow groups of algebraic cycles on a nonsingular quasiprojective algebraic variety over a field of characteristic zero. We settle a question recently raised by Mark Green and Phillip Griffiths concerning the existence of Bloch-Gersten-Quillen-type resolutions of algebraic K-theory sheaves on infinitesimal thickenings of nonsingular varieties, and the relationships between these sequences and their "tangent sequences," expressed in terms of absolute Kähler differentials. More general…
We show that for a complete complex algebraic variety the pure component of homology coincides with the image of intersection homology. Therefore pure homology is topologically invariant. To obtain slightly more general results we introduce "image homology" for noncomplete varieties.
We consider a possibility of the existence of intersection homology morphism, which would be associated to a map of analytic varieties. We assume that the map is an inclusion of codimension one. Then the existence of a morphism follows from Saito's decomposition theorem. For varieties with conical singularities we show, that the existence of intersection homology morphism is exactly equivalent to the validity of Hard Lefschetz Theorem for links. For varieties with arbitrary analytic singularities we extract a remarkable property, which we call Local Hard Lefschetz.
We compute the rational homology of the moduli stack $\mathcal{M}$ of objects in the derived category of certain smooth complex projective varieties $X$ including toric varieties, flag varieties, curves, surfaces, and some 3- and 4-folds. We identify Joyce's vertex algebra construction on $H_\ast(\mathcal{M},\mathbb{Q})$ with a generalized super-lattice vertex algebra associated to $K^0_{\rm top}(X^{\rm an}) \oplus K^1_{\rm top}(X^{\rm an})$.
We generalize the Chern class relation for the transversal intersection of two nonsingular varieties to a relation for possibly singular varieties, under a 'splayedness' assumption. The relation is shown to hold for both the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class and the Chern-Fulton class. The main tool is a formula for Segre classes of splayed subschemes. We also discuss the Chern class relation under the assumption that one of the varieties is a general very ample divisor.
In this paper we introduce the Fourier-Mukai transform for Lawson homology of abelian varieties and prove an inversion theorem for the Lawson homology as well as the morphic cohomology of abelian varieties. As applications, we obtain the direct sum decomposition of the Lawson homology and the morphic cohomology groups with rational coefficients, inspired by Beauville's works on the Chow theory. An analogue of the Beauville conjecture for Chow groups is proposed and is shown to be equivalent to the (weak) Suslin conjecture for Lawson homology. A filtration on Lawson homology is proposed and con…
We present a definition of intersection homology for real algebraic varieties that is analogous to Goresky and MacPherson's original definition of intersection homology for complex varieties.
Kawamata proposed a conjecture predicting that every nef and big line bundle on a smooth projective variety with trivial first Chern class has nontrivial global sections. We verify this conjecture for several cases, including (i) all hyperkähler varieties of dimension $\leq 6$; (ii) all known hyperkähler varieties except for O'Grady's 10-dimensional example; (iii) general complete intersection Calabi-Yau varieties in certain Fano manifolds (e.g. toric ones). Moreover, we investigate the effectivity of Todd classes of hyperkähler varieties and Calabi-Yau varieties. We prove that the fourth Todd…
Motivic integration and MacPherson's transformation are combined in this paper to construct a theory of "stringy" Chern classes for singular varieties. These classes enjoy strong birational invariance properties, and their definition encodes data coming from resolution of singularities. The singularities allowed in the theory are those typical of the minimal model program; examples are given by quotients of manifolds by finite groups. For the latter an explicit formula is proven, assuming that the canonical line bundle of the manifold descends to the quotient. This gives an expression of the s…
Let X be a smooth projective variety of dimension n on which rational and homological equivalence coincide for algebraic p-cycles in the range 0\leq p\leq s. We show that the homologically trivial sector of rational Lawson homology L_pH_k(X,Q)_{hom} vanishes for 0\leq n-p\leq s+2. This is an analogue of a theorem of C. Peters in "dual dimensions". Together with Peters' theorem we get that the natural transformation L_pH_k(X,Q)--> H_k(X,Q) is injective for all p and k when X is a smooth projective variety of dimension 4 and Ch_0(X) =Z.
In this paper, I construct Chern classes in the rigid cohomology of P. Berthelot. We start by constructing Chern classes for proper varieties. To prove all the properties we have to reinterpret the construction in a crystalline way. Then we can deal with open varieties using a compactification theorem.
Consider the natural torus action on a partial flag manifold $Fl$. Let $Ω_I\subset Fl$ be an open Schubert variety, and let $c^{sm}(Ω_I)\in H_T^*(Fl)$ be its torus equivariant Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class. We show a set of interpolation properties that uniquely determine $c^{sm}(Ω_I)$, as well as a formula, of `localization type', for $c^{sm}(Ω_I)$. In fact, we proved similar results for a class $κ_I\in H_T^*(Fl)$ --- in the context of quantum group actions on the equivariant cohomology groups of partial flag varieties. In this note we show that $c^{SM}(Ω_I)=κ_I$.
We observe that linear relations among Chern-Mather classes of projective varieties are preserved by projective duality. We deduce the existence of an explicit involution on a part of the Chow group of projective space, encoding the effect of duality on Chern-Mather classes. Applications include Plücker formulae, constraints on self-dual varieties, generalizations to singular varieties of classical formulas for the degree of the dual and the dual defect, formulas for the Euclidean distance degree, and computations of Chern-Mather classes and local Euler obstructions for cones.
We demonstrate that a conjecture of Teh which relates the niveau filtration on Borel-Moore homology of real varieties and the images of generalized cycle maps from reduced Lawson homology is false. We show that the niveau filtration on reduced Lawson homology is trivial and construct an explicit class of examples for which Teh's conjecture fails by generalizing a result of Schulting. We compare various cycle maps and in particular we show that the Borel-Haeflinger cycle map naturally factors through the reduced Lawson homology cycle map.
We introduce a formal integral on the system of varieties mapping properly and birationally to a given one, with value in an associated Chow group. Applications include comparisons of Chern numbers of birational varieties, new birational invariants, `stringy' Chern classes, and a `celestial' zeta function specializing to the topological zeta function. In its simplest manifestation, the integral gives a new expression for Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of possibly singular varieties, placing them into a context in which a `change of variable' formula holds. The formalism has points of contac…
Let $X$ be a toric variety. Rationally Borel-Moore homology of $X$ is isomorphic to the homology of the Koszul complex $A^T_*(X)\otimes Λ^\x M$, where $A^T_*(X)$ is the equivariant Chow group and $M$ is the character group of $T$. Moreover, the same holds for coefficients which are the integers with certain primes inverted.
We propose a version of the Hodge conjecture in Bott-Chern cohomology and using results from characterizing real holomorphic chains by real rectifiable currents to provide a proof for this question. We define a Bott-Chern differential cohomology and use atomic section theory of Harvey and Lawson to construct refined Bott-Chern classes for holomorphic vector bundles in this differential cohomology. These refined Bott-Chern classes transform naturally to standard Chern classes, Bott-Chern classes and Cheeger-Simons' refined Chern classes.
In this paper we develop homology and cohomology theories which play the same role for real projective varieties that Lawson homology and morphic cohomology play for projective varieties respectively. They have nice properties such as the existence of long exact sequences, the homotopy invariance, the Lawson suspension property, the homotopy property for bundle projection, the splitting principle, the cup product, the slant product and the natural transformations to singular theories. The Friedlander-Lawson moving lemma is used to prove a duality theorem between these two theories. This dualit…
We introduce a notion of `proChow group' of varieties, agreeing with the notion of Chow group for complete varieties and covariantly functorial with respect to arbitrary morphisms. We construct a natural transformation from the functor of constructible functions to the proChow functor, extending MacPherson's natural transformation. We illustrate the result by providing very short proofs of (a generalization of) two well-known facts on Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes: Kwiecinski's product formula, and the Ehlers-Barthel-Brasselet-Fieseler computation of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of to…
We give an explicit formula for the zeroth $\mathbb{A}^1$-homology sheaf of a smooth proper variety. We also provide a simple proof of a theorem of Kahn-Sujatha which describes hom sets in the birational localization of the category of smooth varieties.
In 1954 Hirzebruch asked which linear combinations of Chern numbers are topological invariants of smooth complex projective varieties. We give a complete answer to this question in small dimensions, and also prove partial results without restrictions on the dimension.
We give explicit formulas for the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of all Schubert varieties in the Grassmannian of $d$-planes in a vector space, and conjecture that these classes are effective. We prove this is the case for (very) small values of $d$.
We show that the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class of a Schubert cell in a Grassmannian is represented by a reduced and irreducible subvariety in each degree. This gives an affirmative answer to a positivity conjecture of Aluffi and Mihalcea.
We introduce a certain index of a collection of germs of 1-forms on a germ of a singular variety which is a generalization of the local Euler obstruction corresponding to Chern numbers different from the top one.
We prove that the intersection homology Poincare' polynomial P(X) of an affine toric variety X is bounded below by the product P(Y)P(X/Y), where Y is the closure of any orbit in X and X/Y is a slice transverse to the orbit. This proves a combinatorial conjecture of Kalai for rational polytopes.
We consider derived invariants of varieties in positive characteristic arising from topological Hochschild homology. Using theory developed by Ekedahl and Illusie-Raynaud in their study of the slope spectral sequence, we examine the behavior under derived equivalences of various $p$-adic quantities related to Hodge-Witt and crystalline cohomology groups, including slope numbers, domino numbers, and Hodge-Witt numbers. As a consequence, we obtain restrictions on the Hodge numbers of derived equivalent varieties, partially extending results of Popa-Schell to positive characteristic.
We define an `enriched' notion of Chow groups for algebraic varieties, agreeing with the conventional notion for complete varieties, but enjoying a functorial push-forward for arbitrary maps. This tool allows us to glue intersection-theoretic information across elements of a stratification of a variety; we illustrate this operation by giving a direct construction of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of singular varieties, providing a new proof of an old (and long since settled) conjecture of Deligne and Grothendieck.
Homotopy continuation provides a numerical tool for computing the equivalence of a smooth variety in an intersection product. Intersection theory provides a theoretical tool for relating the equivalence of a smooth variety in an intersection product to the degrees of the Chern classes of the variety. A combination of these tools leads to a numerical method for computing the degrees of Chern classes of smooth projective varieties in P^n. We illustrate the approach through several worked examples.
There is a Chern character from K-theory to negative cyclic homology. We show that it preserves the decomposition coming from Adams operations, at least in characteristic 0. This is done by using infinitesimal cohomology to reduce to the case of a nilpotent ideal (which had been established by Cathelineau some time ago).
We obtain several formulas for the Euclidean distance degree (ED degree) of an arbitrary nonsingular variety in projective space: in terms of Chern and Segre classes, Milnor classes, Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes, and an extremely simple formula equating the Euclidean distance degree of X with the Euler characteristic of an open subset of X.
We study a K-theoretic characteristic class of singular varieties, namely the equivariant motivic Chern class. We prove that the motivic Chern class is characterized by an axiom system inspired by that of "K-theoretic stable envelopes," recently defined by Okounkov and studied in relation with quantum group actions on the K-theory algebra of moduli spaces. We also give explicit formulas for the equivariant motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells and matrix Schubert cells. Lastly, we calculate the equivariant motivic Chern class of the orbits of the A2 quiver representation, which yields formul…
It was noticed in a very recent preprint of T. Eguchi, K. Hori, and Ch.-Sh. Xiong (hep-th/9703086) that a curious identity between Betti numbers and Chern classes holds for many examples of Fano varieties. The goal of this paper is to prove that for varieties with trivial odd cohomology groups this identity is equivalent to having zero Hodge numbers $h^{p,q}$ for $p\neq q$.
We prove that a rational linear combination of Chern numbers is an oriented diffeomorphism invariant of smooth complex projective varieties if and only if it is a linear combination of the Euler and Pontryagin numbers. In dimension at least three we prove that only multiples of the top Chern number, which is the Euler characteristic, are invariant under diffeomorphisms that are not necessarily orientation-preserving. These results solve a long-standing problem of Hirzebruch's. We also determine the linear combinations of Chern numbers that can be bounded in terms of Betti numbers.
Given a closed subvariety of an algebraic torus, the associated tropical variety is a polyhedral fan in the space of 1-parameter subgroups of the torus which describes the behaviour of the subvariety at infinity. We show that the link of the origin has only top rational homology if a genericity condition is satisfied. Our result is obtained using work of Tevelev and Deligne's theory of mixed Hodge structures.
We will show that the cotangent bundle of a manifold whose free loopspace homology grows exponentially is not symplectomorphic to any smooth affine variety. We will also show that the unit cotangent bundle of such a manifold is not Stein fillable by a Stein domain whose completion is symplectomorphic to a smooth affine variety. For instance, these results hold for end connect sums of simply connected manifolds whose cohomology with coefficients in some field has at least two generators. We use an invariant called the growth rate of symplectic homology to prove this result.
This paper establishes an isomorphism between the Bar-Natan skein module of the solid torus with a particular boundary curve system and the homology of the (n,n) Springer variety. The results build on Khovanov's work with crossingless matchings and the cohomology of the (n,n) Springer variety. We also give a formula for comultiplication in the Bar-Natan skein module for this specific three-manifold and boundary curve system.
Let $K$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $0$. For $m\geq n$, we define $τ_{m,n,k}$ to be the set of $m\times n$ matrices over $K$ with kernel dimension $\geq k$. This is a projective subvariety of $\bbP^{mn-1}$, and is called the (generic) determinantal variety. In most cases $τ_{m,n,k}$ is singular with singular locus $τ_{m,n,k+1}$. In this paper we give explicit formulas computing the Chern-Mather class ($c_M$) and the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class ($c_{SM}$) of $τ_{m,n,k}$, as classes in the projective space. We also obtain formulas for the conormal cycles and the charac…
We generalize the Harnack-Thom theorem to relate the ranks of the Lawson homology groups with $\Z_2$-coefficients of a real quasiprojective variety with the ranks of its reduced real Lawson homology groups. In the case of zero-cycle group, we recover the classical Harnack-Thom theorem and generalize the classical version to include real quasiprojective varieties. We use Weil's construction of Picard varieties to construct reduced real Picard groups, and Milnor's construction of universal bundles to construct some weak models of classifying spaces of some cycle groups. These weak models are use…
In this paper, we study the persistent homology of the offset filtration of algebraic varieties. We prove the algebraicity of two quantities central to the computation of persistent homology. Moreover, we connect persistent homology and algebraic optimization. Namely, we express the degree corresponding to the distance variable of the offset hypersurface in terms of the Euclidean Distance Degree of the starting variety, obtaining a new way to compute these degrees. Finally, we describe the non-properness locus of the offset construction and use this to describe the set of points that are topol…
We present an algorithm for the symbolic and numerical computation of the degrees of the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of a closed subvariety of projective space P^n. As the degree of the top Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class is the topological Euler characteristic, this also yields a method to compute the topological Euler characteristic of projective varieties. The method is based on Aluffi's symbolic algorithm to compute degrees of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes, a symbolic method to compute degrees of Segre classes, and the regenerative cascade by Hauenstein, Sommese and Wampler. The …
In this paper a formula is proved for the general degeneracy locus associated to an oriented quiver of type A_n. Given a finite sequence of vector bundles with maps between them, these loci are described by putting rank conditions on arbitrary composites of the maps. Our answer is a polynomial in Chern classes of the bundles involved, depending on the given rank conditions. It can be expressed as a linear combination of products of Schur polynomials in the differences of the bundles. The coefficients are interesting generalizations of Littlewood-Richardson numbers. These polynomials specialize…
Given a smooth projective toric variety X, we construct an A-infinity category of Lagrangians with boundary on a level set of the Landau-Ginzburg mirror of X. We prove that this category is quasi-equivalent to the DG category of line bundles on X. This establishes part of the Homological Mirror Conjecture for toric varieties.
