A classification of normal affine surfaces admitting a $\bf C^*$-action was given in the work of Białynicki-Birula, Fieseler and L. Kaup, Orlik and Wagreich, Rynes and others. We provide a simple alternative description of such surfaces in terms of their graded rings as well as by defining equations. This is based on a generalization of the Dolgachev-Pinkham-Demazure construction in the case of a hyperbolic grading. As an apllication we determine the structure of singularities, of the orbits and the divisor class groups for such surfaces.
Due to Rentschler, Miyanishi and Kojima, the invariant ring for a ${\bf G}_a$-action on the affine plane over an arbitrary field is generated by one coordinate. In this note, we give a new short proof for this result using the automorphism theorem of Jung and van der Kulk.
We study the property of a normal scheme, that the complement of every hypersurface is an affine scheme. To this end we introduce the affine class group. It is a factor group of the divisor class group and measures the deviation from this property. We study the behaviour of the affine class group under faithfully flat extensions and under the formation of products, and we compute it for different classes of rings.
Generalizing the passage from a fan to a toric variety, we provide a combinatorial approach to construct arbitrary effective torus actions on normal, algebraic varieties. Based on the notion of a ``proper polyhedral divisor'' introduced in earlier work, we develop the concept of a ``divisorial fan'' and show that these objects encode the equivariant gluing of affine varieties with torus action. We characterize separateness and completeness of the resulting varieties in terms of divisorial fans, and we study examples like C*-surfaces and projectivizations of (non-split) vector bundles over tori…
Algebraic actions of unipotent groups $U$ actions on affine $k-$varieties $X$ ($k$ an algebraically closed field of characteristic 0) for which the algebraic quotient $X//U$ has small dimension are considered$.$ In case $X$ is factorial, $O(X)^{\ast}=k^{\ast},$ and $X//U$ is one-dimensional, it is shown that $O(X)^{U}$=$k[f]$, and if some point in $X$ has trivial isotropy, then $X$ is $U$ equivariantly isomorphic to $U\times A^{1}(k).$ The main results are given distinct geometric and algebraic proofs. Links to the Abhyankar-Sathaye conjecture and a new equivalent formulation of the Sathaye co…
We investigate flexibility of affine varieties with an action of a linear algebraic group. Flexibility of a smooth affine variety with only constant invertible functions and a locally transitive action of a reductive group is proved. Also we show that a normal affine complexity-zero horospherical variety is flexible.
We extend the Altmann-Hausen presentation of normal affine algebraic C-varieties endowed with effective torus actions to the real setting. In particular, we focus on actions of quasi-split real tori, in which case we obtain a simpler presentation.
Using the approach of Barkatou and El Kaoui, we classify certain affine curves over discrete valuation rings having a free additive group action. Our classification generalizes results of Miyanishi in equi-characteristic 0.
We classify the $\mathbb{G}_{a}$-actions on normal affine varieties defined over any field that are horizontal with respect to a torus action of complexity one. This generalizes previous results that were available for perfect ground fields (cf. [Flenner-Zaidenberg2005, Liendo2010, L-Liendo2016]).
In 2021, Dzhunusov and Zaitseva classified two-dimensional normal affine commutative algebraic monoids. In this work, we extend this classification to noncommutative monoid structures on normal affine surfaces. We prove that two-dimensional algebraic monoids are toric. We also show how to find all monoid structures on a normal toric surface. Every such structure is induced by a comultiplication formula involving Demazure roots. We also give descriptions of opposite monoids, quotient monoids, and boundary divisors.
This note is a supplement to the papers: R. V. Gurjar, K. Masuda, M. Miyanishi and P. Russell, Affine lines on affine surfaces and the Makar-Limanov invariant, preprint, 2005, 42p. and T. Kishimoto and H. Kojima, Affine lines on {\bf Q}-homology planes with logarithmic Kodaira dimension $-\infty$, Transform. Groups 11 (2006), no. 4 (to appear). We show the role of group actions in classification of affine lines on {\bf Q}-homology planes.
We give a criterion of existence of a unipotent group action on the affine cone over a projective variety or, more generally, on the affine quasicone over a variety which is projective over another affine variety.
We provide a complete description of normal affine algebraic varieties over the real numbers endowed with an effective action of the real circle, that is, the real form of the complex multiplicative group whose real locus consists of the unitary circle in the real plane. Our approach builds on the geometrico-combinatorial description of normal affine varieties with effective actions of split tori in terms of proper polyhedral divisors on semiprojective varieties due to Altmann and Hausen
Affine varieties of dimension greater than two can be explored their structures with the help of fibrations by the affine line or plane and quotient morphisms by $\mathbb{G}_a$-actions. We consider $\mathbb{G}_a$-actions on affine threefolds and discuss the structure and the singularities of the quotient surface as well as the singular fibers of the quotient morphism. Relative $\mathbb{G}_a$ and $\mathbb{G}_m$-actions on $\mathbb{A}^4$ or on an affine 4-fold having $\mathbb{A}^3$-fibrations over $\mathbb{A}^1$ are discussed when the actions leave one variable invariant or the fibration invaria…
We show that every irreducible, simply connected curve on a toric affine surface X over the field of complex numbers is an orbit closure of a multiplicative group action on X. It follows that up to the action of the automorphism group Aut(X) there are only finitely many non-equivalent embeddings of the affine line in X. A similar description is given for simply connected curves in the quotients of the affine plane by small finite linear groups. We provide also an analog of the Jung-van der Kulk theorem for affine toric surfaces, and apply this to study actions of algebraic groups on such surfa…
We address the following question: Determine the affine cones over smooth projective varieties which admit an action of a connected algebraic group different from the standard C*-action by scalar matrices and its inverse action. We show in particular that the affine cones over anticanonically embedded smooth del Pezzo surfaces of degree at least 4 possess such an action. A question by Flenner and the third author whether this is also true for cubic surfaces, occurs to be out of reach for our methods. Nevertheless, we provide a general geometric criterion that could be helpful also in this case…
We give a classification of normal affine surfaces admitting an algebraic group action with an open orbit. In particular an explicit algebraic description of the affine coordinate rings and the defining equations of such varieties is given. By our methods we recover many known results, e.g. the classification of normal affine surfaces with a `big' open orbit of Gizatullin and Popov or some of the classification results of Danilov-Gizatullin, Bertin and others.
We show that any normal irreducible affine $n$-dimensional $SL_n$-variety $X$ is determined by its automorphism group in the category of normal irreducible affine varieties: if $Y$ is an irreducible affine normal algebraic variety such that $Aut(X) \cong Aut(Y)$ as ind-groups, then $Y \cong X$ as varieties. If we drop the condition of normality on $Y$ , then $X$ is not uniquely determined and we classify all such varieties. In case $n \ge 3$, all the above results hold true if we replace $Aut(X)$ by $U(X)$, where $U(X)$ is the subgroup of $Aut(X)$ generated by all one-dimensional unipotent sub…
Using Galois descent tools, we extend the Altmann-Hausen presentation of normal affine algebraic varieties endowed with an effective torus action over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero to the case where the ground field is an arbitrary field of characteristic zero. In this context, the acting torus may have non-trivial torsors and we need additional data to encode such varieties. Finally, we focus on affine varieties endowed with a two-dimensional torus action and we provide a method for determining when a torsor is trivial, in which case the Altmann-Hausen presentation simp…
We compare two notions of tameness: one introduced in [CEPT96] for actions of affine group schemes and one introduced in [AOV08] for stacks. From this comparison, we deduce results on the structure of inertia groups in these tame situations.
We study affine toric varieties with an action of group $SL_n$ with a dense orbit. A characterisation in terms of $SL_n \times Q$-modules is given where $Q$ is a quasitorus. This characterisation is more explicitly expanded in case $n=3$. It is shown that in case $n=3$ the class group rank is not greater than $3$, however it is unbounded when $n\geq 4$.
The main result of this article is to construct infinite families of non-equivalent equivariant real forms of linear C*-actions on affine four-space. We consider the real form of C* whose fixed point is a circle. In [F-MJ] one example of a non-linearizable circle action was constructed. Here, this result is generalized by developing a new approach which allows us to compare different real forms. The constructions of these forms are based on the structure of equivariant O2(C)-vector bundles.
In this paper we classify SL_2-actions on normal affine T-varieties that are normalized by the torus T. This is done in terms of a combinatorial description of T-varieties given by Altmann and Hausen. The main ingredient is a generalization of Demazure's roots of the fan of a toric variety. As an application we give a description of special SL_2-actions on normal affine varieties. We also obtain, in our terms, the classification of quasihomogeneous SL_2-threefolds due to Popov.
We construct an action of the graded double affine Hecke algebra (DAHA) on the parabolic Hitchin complex, extending the affine Weyl group action constructed in \cite{GSI}. In particular, we get representations of the degenerate DAHA on the cohomology of parabolic Hitchin fibers. We also generalize our construction to {\em parahoric} versions of Hitchin stacks, including the construction of 'tHooft operators as a special case. We then study the interaction of the DAHA action and the cap product action given by the Picard stack acting on the parabolic Hitchin stack.
In this paper we prove that if two normal affine surfaces $S$ and $S'$ have isomorphic automorphism groups, then every connected algebraic group acting regularly and faithfully on $S$ acts also regularly and faithfully on $S'$. Moreover, if $S$ is non-toric, we show that the dynamical type of a 1-torus action is preserved in presence of an additive group action. We also show that complex affine toric surfaces are determined by the abstract group structure of their regular automorphism groups in the category of complex normal affine surfaces using properties of the Cremona group. As a generaliz…
It was proved by Ginzburg and Mirkovic-Vilonen that the $G(O)$-equivariant perverse sheaves on the affine grassmannian of a connected reductive group $G$ form a tensor category equivalent to the tensor category of finite dimensional representations of the dual group $G^\vee$. The proof use the Tannakian formalism. The purpose of this paper is to construct explicitely the action of $G^\vee$ on the global cohomology of a perverse sheaf.
Let X be a normal affine T-variety of complexity at most one over a perfect field k, where T stands for the split algebraic torus. Our main result is a classification of additive group actions on X that are normalized by the T-action. This generalizes the classification given by the second author in the particular case where k is algebraically closed and of characteristic zero. With the assumption that the characteristic of k is positive, we introduce the notion of rationally homogeneous locally finite iterative higher derivations which corresponds geometrically to additive group actions on af…
In this note we give a classification of all affine normal $SL_2$-varieties containing an open dense orbit over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. Such a classification was first obtained by Popov. Here we provide an alternative approach.
We present a generalized version of classical geometric invariant theory à la Mumford where we consider an affine algebraic group $G$ acting on a specific affine algebraic variety $X$. We define the notions of linearly reductive and of unipotent action in terms of the $G$ fixed point functor in the category of $(G,\Bbbk [X])$--modules. In the case that $X=\{\star\}$ we recuperate the concept of lineraly reductive and of unipotent group. We prove in our "relative" context some of the classical results of GIT such as: existence of quotients, finite generation of invariants, Kostant--Rosenlicht's…
Consider a finite l-group acting on the affine space of dimension n over a field k, whose characteristic differs from l. We prove the existence of a fixed point, rational over k, in the following cases: --- The field k is p-special for some prime p different from its characteristic. --- The field k is perfect and fertile, and n = 3.
We address the following question: When an affine cone over a smooth Fano threefold admits an effective action of the additive group? In this paper we deal with Fano threefolds of index 1 and Picard number 1. Our approach is based on a geometric criterion from our previous paper, which relates the existence of an additive group action on the cone over a smooth projective variety X with the existence of an open polar cylinder in X. Non-trivial families of Fano threefolds carrying a cylinder were found in loc. cit. Here we provide new such examples.
Let X be a normal affine T-variety, where T stands for the algebraic torus. We classify Ga-actions on X arising from homogeneous locally nilpotent derivations of fiber type. We deduce that any variety with trivial Makar-Limanov (ML) invariant is birationally decomposable as Y\times P^2, for some Y. Conversely, given a variety Y, there exists an affine variety X with trivial ML invariant birational to Y\times P^2. Finally, we introduce a new version of the ML invariant, called the FML invariant. According to our conjecture, the triviality of the FML invariant implies rationality. This conjectur…
Given a connected reductive algebraic group $G$ and a Borel subgroup $B \subseteq G$, we study $B$-normalized one-parameter additive group actions on affine spherical $G$-varieties. We establish basic properties of such actions and their weights and discuss many examples exhibiting various features. We propose a construction of such actions that generalizes the well-known construction of normalized one-parameter additive group actions on affine toric varieties. Using this construction, for every affine horospherical $G$-variety $X$ we obtain a complete description of all $G$-normalized one-par…
We consider normal affine T-varieties X endowed with an action of finite abelian group G commuting with the action of T. For such varieties we establish the existence of G-equivariant geometrico-combinatorial presentations in the sense of Altmann and Hausen. As an application, we determine explicit presentations of the Koras-Russell threefolds as bi-cyclic covers of A^3 equipped with a hyperbolic C^*-action.
We propose a new stratification of the reduced subschemes of Rapoport-Zink spaces and of affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties that highlights the relation between the geometry of these spaces and the action of the associated automorphism group. We show that this provides a joint group-theoretic interpretation of well-known stratifications which only exist for special cases such as the Bruhat-Tits stratification of Vollaard and Wedhorn, the semi-module stratification of de Jong and Oort, and the locus where the a-invariant is equal to 1.
We prove that a normal affine surface $V$ over $\bf C$ admits an effective action of a maximal torus ${\bf T}={\bf C}^{*n}$ ($n\le 2$) such that any other effective ${\bf C}^*$-action is conjugate to a subtorus of $\bf T$ in Aut $(V)$, in the following particular cases: (a) the Makar-Limanov invariant ML$(V)$ is nontrivial, (b) $V$ is a toric surface, (c) $V={\bf P}^1\times {\bf P}^1\backslash Δ$, where $Δ$ is the diagonal, and (d) $V={\bf P}^2\backslash Q$, where $Q$ is a nonsingular quadric. In case (a) this generalizes a result of Bertin for smooth surfaces, whereas (b) was previously known…
A group G acts infinitely transitively on a set Y if for every positive integer m, its action is m-transitive on Y. Given a real affine algebraic variety Y of dimension greater than or equal to two, we show that, under a mild restriction, if the special automorphism group of Y (the group generated by one-parameter unipotent subgroups) is infinitely transitive on each connected component of the smooth locus of Y, then for any real affine suspension X over Y, the special automorphism group of X is infinitely transitive on each connected component of the smooth locus of X. This generalizes a rece…
We propose a generalization of Springer representations to the context of groups over a global function field. The global counterpart of the Grothendieck simultaneous resolution is the parabolic Hitchin fibration. We construct an action of the affine Weyl group on the direct image complex of the parabolic Hitchin fibration. In particular, we get representations of the affine Weyl group on the cohomology of parabolic Hitchin fibers, providing the first step towards a global Springer theory.
Let $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>0$ and let $C/k$ be a smooth connected affine curve. Denote by $π_1(C)$ its algebraic fundamental group. The goal of this paper is to characterize a certain subset of closed normal subgroups $N$ of $π_1(C)$. In "Normal subgroups of fundamental groups of affine curves in positive characteristic" we proved the same result under the additional hypothesis that $k$ had countable cardinality.
In this paper we complete the classification of effective C*-actions on smooth affine surfaces up to conjugation in the full automorphism group and up to inversion of C*. If a smooth affine surface V admits more than one C*-action then it is known to be Gizatullin i.e., it can be completed by a linear chain of smooth rational curves. In our previous paper we gave a sufficient condition, in terms of the Dolgachev- Pinkham-Demazure (or DPD) presentation, for the uniqueness of a C*-action on a Gizatullin surface. In the present paper we show that this condition is also necessary, at least in the …
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…
Let G be the (special) affine group, semidirect product of SL_n and C^n. In this paper we study the representation theory of G and in particular the question of rationality for V/G where V is a generically free G-representation. We show that the answer to this question is positive if the dimension of V is sufficiently large and V is indecomposable. We have a more precise theorem if V is a two-step extension 0 -> S -> V -> Q -> 0 with S, Q completely reducible.
In this article, we show that the categorical action of the shifted $q=0$ affine algebra can be used to construct (or induce) t-structures on the weight categories. The main idea is to interpret the exceptional collection constructed by Kapranov as convolution of Fourier-Mukai kernels in the categorical action via using the Borel-Weil-Bott theorem. In particular, when the categories are the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on Grassmannians. The t-structure we obtain is precisely the exotic t-structure defined by Bezrukavnikov of the exceptional collections given by Kapranov. As an …
We explain how quantum affine algebra actions can be used to systematically construct "exotic" t-structures. The main idea, roughly speaking, is to take advantage of the two different descriptions of quantum affine algebras, the Drinfeld--Jimbo and the Kac--Moody realizations. Our main application is to obtain exotic t-structures on certain convolution varieties defined using the Beilinson--Drinfeld and affine Grassmannians. These varieties play an important role in the geometric Langlands program, knot homology constructions, K-theoretic geometric Satake and the coherent Satake category. As a…
The affine cancellation problem, which asks whether complex affine varieties with isomorphic cylinders are themselves isomorphic, has a positive solution for two dimensional varieties whose coordinate rings are unique factorization domains, in particular for the affine plane, but counterexamples are found within normal surfaces Danielewski surfaces and factorial threefolds of logarithmic Kodaira dimension equal to 1. The latter are therefore remote from the affine three-space, the first unknown case where the base of one cylinder is an affine space. Locally trivial Ga-actions play a significan…
We construct a non-normal affine monoid together with its modules associated with a negative definite plumbed $3$-manifold $M$. In terms of their structure, we describe the $H_1(M,\mathbb{Z})$-equivariant parts of the topological Poincaré series. In particular, we give combinatorial formulas for the Seiberg--Witten invariants of $M$ and for polynomial generalizations defined in a previous paper of the authors.
We classify commutative algebraic monoid structures on normal affine surfaces over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero. The answer is given in two languages: comultiplications and Cox coordinates. The result follows from a more general classification of commutative monoid structures of rank 0, n-1 or n on a normal affine variety of dimension n.
We introduce a new algebra called the shifted $q=0$ affine algebra, which arises naturally from the study of coherent sheaves on Grassmannians and n-step partial flag varieties via a natural correspondence. It has similar presentation as the shifted quantum affine algebra defined by Finkelberg-Tsymbaliuk arXiv:1708.01795v6. We then give a definition of its categorical action and prove that there is a categorical action on the bounded derived categories of coherent sheaves on n-step partial flag varieties. Finally, as an application, we use it to construct a categorical action of the $q=0$ affi…
