I will discuss recent progress by many people in the program of extending natural topological invariants from manifolds to singular spaces. Intersection homology theory and mixed Hodge theory are model examples of such invariants. The past 20 years have seen a series of new invariants, partly inspired by string theory, such as motivic integration and the elliptic genus of a singular variety. These theories are not defined in a topological way, but there are intriguing hints of their topological significance.
We generalize classical results about the topology of toric varieties to the case of projective Q-factorial T-varieties of complexity one using the language of divisorial fans. We describe the Hodge-Deligne polynomial in the smooth case, the cohomology ring and the Chow ring in the contraction-free case.
We first construct explicit bases for the cotangent spaces at singular points on Hibi toric varieties, i.e., toric varieties associated to distributive lattices. We then determine the singular loci of these toric varieties.
This work has two complementary parts, in the first part we compute the local Euler obstruction of generic determinantal varieties and apply this result to compute the Chern--Schwartz--MacPherson class of such varieties. In the second part we compute the Euler characteristic of the stabilization of an essentially isolated determinantal singularity (EIDS). The formula is given in terms of the local Euler obstruction and Gaffney's $m_{d}$ multiplicity.
Richardson varieties play an important role in intersection theory and in the geometric interpretation of the Littlewood-Richardson Rule for flag varieties. We discuss three natural generalizations of Richardson varieties which we call projection varieties, intersection varieties, and rank varieties. In many ways, these varieties are more fundamental than Richardson varieties and are more easily amenable to inductive geometric constructions. In this paper, we study the singularities of each type of generalization. Like Richardson varieties, projection varieties are normal with rational singula…
Regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties form an important family of subvarieties of the flag variety, which are often singular and sometimes not normal varieties. Like Schubert varieties, they contain distinguished points called permutation flags. In this paper, we give a combinatorial characterization for a permutation flag of a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety to be a singular point. We also apply this result to characterize regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties which are normal algebraic varieties.
This paper studies the singularities of affine Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian (of type $\mathrm{A}^{(1)}_\ell$). For two classes of affine Schubert varieties, we determine the singular loci; and for one class, we also determine explicitly the tangent spaces at singular points. For a general affine Schubert variety, we give partial results on the singular locus.
We answer two questions of Carrell on a singular complex projective variety admitting the multiplicative group action, one positively and the other negatively. The results are applied to Chow varieties and we obtain Chow groups of 0-cycles and Lawson homology groups of 1-cycles for Chow varieties. A short survey on the structure of the Chow varieties is included for comparison and completeness. Moreover, we give counterexamples to Shafarevich's question on the rationality of the irreducible components of Chow varieties.
We discuss different generalizations of the classical notion of the index of a singular point of a vector field to the case of vector fields or 1-forms on singular varieties, describe relations between them and formulae for their computation.
Let X be a projective variety, possibly singular. A generalized Albanese variety of X was constructed by Esnault, Srinivas and Viehweg over algebraically closed base field as a universal regular quotient of the relative Chow group of 0-cycles by Levine-Weibel. In this paper, we obtain a functorial description of the Albanese of Esnault-Srinivas-Viehweg over a perfect base field, using duality theory of 1-motives with unipotent part.
Based on the Brieskorn-Slodowy-Grothendieck diagram, we write the holomorphic structures (or filtrations) of the ADE Lie algebra bundles over the corresponding type ADE flag varieties, over the cotangent bundles of these flag varieties, and over the corresponding type $ADE$ singular surfaces. The main tool is the cohomology of line bundles over flag varieties and their cotangent bundles.
For the toric variety X associated to the Bruhat poset of Schubert varieties in a minuscule G/P, we describe the singular locus in terms of the faces of the associated polyhedral cone. We further show that the singular locus is pure of codimension 3 in X.
Although regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties are smooth and irreducible, semisimple Hessenberg varieties are not necessarily smooth in general. In this paper we determine the irreducible components of semisimple Hessenberg varieties corresponding to the standard Hessenberg space. We prove that these irreducible components are smooth and give an explicit description of their intersections, which constitute the singular locus. We conclude with an example of a semisimple Hessenberg variety corresponding to another Hessenberg space which is singular and irreducible, showing that results of thi…
We address the question of finding algebraic properties that are respectively equivalent, for a morphism between algebraic varieties over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, to be an homeomorphism for the Zariski topology and for a strong topology that we introduce. Our answers involve a study of seminormalization and saturation for morphisms between algebraic varieties, together with an interpretation in terms of continuous rational functions on the closed points of an algebraic variety. The continuity refers to the strong topology which is the usual Euclidean topology in th…
This paper surveys the authors recent work on two variable elliptic genus of singular varieties. The last section calculates a generating function for the elliptic genera of symmetric products. This generalizes the classical results of Macdonald and Zagier.
Let Y be a normal crossing divisor in the smooth projective algebraic variety X (defined over ${\mathbb C}$) and let U be a tubular neighbourhood of Y in X. We construct homological cycles generating $H_*(A,B)$, where (A,B) is one of the following pairs $(Y,\emptyset)$, (X,Y), (X,X-Y), $(X-Y,\emptyset)$ and $(\partial U,\emptyset)$. The construction is compatible with the weights in $H_*(A,B,{\mathbb Q})$ of Deligne's mixed Hodge structure.
In this paper we study the geometry of mildly singular Fano varieties on which there is an effective prime divisor of Picard number one. Afterwards, we address the case of toric varieties. Finally, we treat the lifting of extremal contractions to universal covering spaces in codimension 1.
A theorem of Jannsen asserts that if a smooth projective variety has injective cycle class maps, it has surjective cycle class maps. The object of this note is to present a version of Jannsen's theorem for singular quasi--projective varieties.
We study the Chow group of zero-cycles on singular varieties using the cdh topology. We define the cdh versions of the zero-cycles and albanese maps. We prove results comparing these groups for a singular variety with the similar groups on the resolution of singularities. We use these to prove some results about the known Chow group of zero-cycles on surfaces and threefolds and some cases of arbitrary dimension.
Let X be the complex Fermat variety of dimension n=2d and degree m>2. We investigate the submodule of the middle homology group of X with integer coefficients generated by the classes of standard d-dimensional subspaces contained in X, and give an algebraic (or rather combinatorial) criterion for the primitivity of this submodule.
This expository note surveys some results on equivariant K-theory of varieties with a torus action, focusing on recent work with Sam Payne and Richard Gonzales. It is based on my contribution to the Clifford Lectures at Tulane University in March 2015.
Let $\mathcal{A}_g$ denote the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension $g \ge 3.$ In this paper we prove the connectedness of the singular sublocus of $\mathcal{A}_g$ consisting of those abelian varieties which possess an involution different from $-id$.
We correct the proof and slightly strengthen a Kodaira-type vanishing theorem for singular varieties originally due to Jaffe and the first author. Specifically, we show that if $L$ is a nef and big line bundle on a projective variety of characteristic zero, the $i^{\text{th}}$ cohomology of $L^{-1}$ vanishes for $i$ in a range determined by the depth and dimension of the singular locus.
Let $X$ be a cubic fourfold that has only simple singularities and does not contain a plane. We prove that the Fano variety of lines on $X$ has the same analytic type of singularity as the Hilbert scheme of two points on a surface with only ADE-singularities. This is shown as a corollary to the characterization of a singularity that is obtained as a $K3^{[2]}$-type contraction and has a unique symplectic resolution.
We discuss Hironaka's theorem on resolution of singularities in charactetistic 0 as well as more recent progress, both on simplifying and improving Hironaka's method of proof and on new results and directions on families of varieties, leading to joint work on toroidal orbifolds with Michael Temkin and Jarosław Włodarczyk.
What is generally known as the "Bloch--Srinivas method" consists of decomposing the diagonal of a smooth projective variety, and then considering the action of correspondences in cohomology. In this note, we observe that this same method can also be extended to singular and quasi--projective varieties. We give two applications of this observation: the first is a version of Mumford's theorem, the second is concerned with the Hodge conjecture for singular varieties.
We prove that any ample class on a primitive symplectic variety that is locally trivial deformation of O'Grady's singular 6 dimensional example is proportional to the first Chern class of a uniruled divisor. This result answers a question of Lehn, Mongardi and Pacienza, extending their result for primitive symplectic varieties of this deformation type.
Assume that two algebraic varieties of finite type over the complex numbers are related by a morphism whose fibers are precisely the orbits for the action of a unipotent group. We show that the two varieties have the same topological Euler characteristic. If they are smooth and the morphism is smooth, we show that the two varieties have the same cohomology groups.
For G = GL_2, PGL_2 and SL_2 we prove that the perverse filtration associated to the Hitchin map on the cohomology of the moduli space of twisted G-Higgs bundles on a Riemann surface C agrees with the weight filtration on the cohomology of the twisted G character variety of C, when the cohomologies are identified via non-Abelian Hodge theory. The proof is accomplished by means of a study of the topology of the Hitchin map over the locus of integral spectral curves.
We generalize Givental's Theorem for complete intersections in smooth toric varieties in the Fano case. In particular, we find Gromov--Witten invariants of Fano varieties of dimension $\geq 3$, which are complete intersections in weighted projective spaces and singular toric varieties. We generalize the Riemann-Roch equations to weighted projective spaces. We compute counting matrices of smooth Fano threefolds with Picard group Z and anticanonical degrees 2, 8, and 16.
We discuss the basic properties of various versions of two variable elliptic genus with special attention to the equivariant elliptic genus. The main applications are to the elliptic genera attached to non-compact GITs, including the elliptic genera of Witten's phases on $N=2$ theories.
The article has two parts. The first part is devoted to proving a singular version of the logarithmic Kodaira-Akizuki-Nakano vanishing theorem of Esnault and Viehweg. This is then used to prove other vanishing theorems. In the second part these vanishing theorems are used to prove an Arakelov-Parshin type boundedness result for families of canonically polarized varieties with rational Gorenstein singularities.
We prove that the non-nef locus and the restricted base locus of a pseudoeffective divisor coincide on KLT pairs. We also extend to KLT pairs F. Russo's characterization of nef and abundant divisors by means of asymptotic multiplier ideals.
We give various examples of Q-factorial projective toric varieties such that the sum of the squared torus invariant prime divisors is positive. We also determine the generators for the cone of effective $2$-cycles on a toric variety of Picard number two. This result is convenient to explain our examples.
Serre and Abelson have produced examples of non-homeomorphic conjugate varieties. We show that if the field of definition of a polarized projective variety coincides with its field of moduli then all of its conjugates have the same topological type. This extends the class of varieties known to posses conjugacy invariant to canonically embedded varieties. We also show that normal complete interswections in homogeneous varieties have this property.
We compute the integral homology (including torsion), the topological K-theory, and the Hodge structure on cohomology of Calabi-Yau threefold hypersurfaces and complete intersections in Gorenstein toric Fano varieties. The methods are purely topological.
In this paper we consider ideal sheaves associated to the singular loci of a divisor in a linear system $|L|$ of an ample line bundle on a complex abelian variety. We prove an effective result on their (continuous) global generation, after suitable twists by powers of $L$. Moreover we show that similar results hold for subvarieties of a complex abelian variety.
This survey paper reports on work of Birkar, who confirmed a long-standing conjecture of Alexeev and Borisov-Borisov: Fano varieties with mild singularities form a bounded family once their dimension is fixed. Following Prokhorov-Shramov, we explain how this boundedness result implies that birational automorphism groups of projective spaces satisfy the Jordan property, answering a question of Serre in the positive.
Integrals of the Pfaffian form over the nonsingular part of a projective variety compute information closely related to the Mather-Chern class of the variety and to other invariants such as the local Euler obstruction along strata of its singular locus and, in the hypersurface case, Milnor numbers. We obtain simple proofs of these formulas, recovering along the way several classically known results.
We extend the notion of absolute subsets of Betti moduli spaces of smooth algebraic varieties to the case of normal varieties. As a consequence we prove that twisted cohomology jump loci in rank one over a normal variety are a finite union of translated subtori. We show that the same holds for jump loci twisted by a unitary local system in the case where the underlying variety $X$ is projective with $H^1(X,\mathbb{Q})$ pure of weight one. Lastly, we study the interaction of these loci with Hodge theoretic data naturally associated to the representation variety of fundamental groups of smooth p…
