Joachim Jelisiejew – Hilbert Schemes of Points And
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University of Warsaw Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics Joachim Jelisiejew Hilbert schemes of points and their applications PhD dissertation Supervisor dr hab. Jarosław Buczyński Institute of Mathematics University of Warsaw and Institute of Mathematics Polish Academy of Sciences Auxiliary Supervisor dr Weronika Buczyńska Institute of Mathematics University of Warsaw Author’s declaration: I hereby declare that I have written this dissertation myself and all the contents of the dissertation have been obtained by legal means. May 9, 2017 ................................................... Joachim Jelisiejew Supervisors’ declaration: The dissertation is ready to be reviewed. May 9, 2017 ................................................... dr hab. Jarosław Buczyński May 9, 2017 ................................................... dr Weronika Buczyńska Abstract This thesis is concerned with deformation theory of finite subschemes of smooth varieties. Of central interest are the smoothable subschemes (i.e., limits of smooth subschemes). We prove that all Gorenstein subschemes of degree up to 13 are smoothable. This result has immediate applications to finding equations of secant varieties. We also give a description of nonsmoothable Gorenstein subschemes of degree 14, together with an explicit condition for smoothability. We prove that being smoothable is a local property, that it does not depend on the embedding and it is invariant under a base field extension. The above results are equivalently stated in terms of the Hilbert scheme of points, which is the moduli space for this deformation problem. We extensively use the combinatorial framework of Macaulay’s inverse systems. We enrich it with a pro-algebraic group action and use this to reprove and extend recent classification results by Elias and Rossi. We provide a relative version of this framework and use it to give a local description of the universal family over the Hilbert scheme of points. We shortly discuss history of Hilbert schemes of points and provide a list of open questions. Keywords: deformation theory, Hilbert scheme, Gorenstein algebra, inverse system, apolar- ity, smoothability, classification of finite commutative algebras. AMS MSC 2010 classification: 14C05, 14B07, 13N10, 13H10. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview and main results . .3 1.2 Application to secant varieties . .5 1.3 Application to constructing r-regular maps . .6 1.4 A brief historical survey . .8 1.5 Open problems . 12 I Finite algebras 14 2 Basic properties of finite algebras 15 2.1 Gorenstein algebras . 15 2.2 Hilbert function of a local algebra . 18 2.3 Hilbert function of a local Gorenstein algebra . 20 2.4 Betti tables, Boij and Söderberg theory . 23 3 Macaulay’s inverse systems (apolarity) 25 3.1 Definition of contraction action . 25 3.2 Automorphisms and derivations of the power series ring . 28 3.3 Classification of local embedded Gorenstein algebras via apolarity . 30 3.4 Hilbert functions of Gorenstein algebras in terms of inverse systems . 34 3.5 Standard forms of dual generators . 36 3.6 Simplifying dual generators . 38 3.7 Examples I — compressed algebras . 41 3.8 Examples II — (1; 3; 3; 3; 1) .............................. 44 3.9 Examples III — preliminaries for Chapter 6 . 46 II Hilbert schemes 48 4 Preliminaries 49 4.1 Moduli spaces of finite algebras, Hilbert schemes . 49 4.2 Base change of Hilbert schemes . 54 4.3 Loci of Hilbert schemes of points . 55 4.4 Relative Macaulay’s inverse systems . 60 4.5 Homogeneous forms and secant varieties . 66 5 Smoothings 70 5.1 Abstract smoothings . 70 5.2 Comparing abstract and embedded smoothings . 74 5.3 Embedded smoothability depends only on singularity type . 75 5.4 Comparing embedded smoothings and the Hilbert scheme . 76 5.5 Smoothings over rational curves . 78 5.6 Examples of nonsmoothable finite schemes . 79 5.7 Example of smoothings: one-dimensional torus limits . 82 III Applications 88 6 Gorenstein loci for small number of points 89 6.1 Ray families . 90 6.2 Ray families from Macaulay’s inverse systems. 93 6.3 Tangent preserving ray families . 96 6.4 Proof of Theorem 6.1 — preliminaries . 101 6.5 Proof of Theorem 6.1 — smoothability results . 105 6.6 Proof of Theorem 6.3 — the nonsmoothable component (1,6,6,1) . 109 7 Small punctual Hilbert schemes 116 Chapter 1 Introduction The Hilbert scheme of points on a smooth variety X is of central interest for several branches of mathematics: in commutative algebra, it is a moduli space of finite algebras (presented as quotients of a • fixed ring), in geometry and topology, it is a compact variety containing the space of tuples of points • on X; in many cases this space is dense, in algebraic geometry, its construction (1960-61) is one of the advances of the Grothendieck • school [Gro95], it found applications in constructing other moduli spaces and hyperkähler manifolds, and also in McKay correspondence and theory of higher secant varieties, in combinatorics, the Hilbert scheme appears in Haiman’s proofs of n! and Macdonald • positivity conjectures. Consider the set of finite algebras, presented as quotients of a fixed polynomial ring. There is a unique and natural topological space structure on this set, together with a sheaf of regular functions. These structures jointly give a scheme structure, called the Hilbert scheme of points on affine space, see Chapter 4.1 for precise definition. These structures are unique, but they are non-explicit and difficult to investigate; many open questions persist, despite continuous research, see Section 1.5. In this thesis we analyse the geometry of Hilbert schemes of points on smooth varieties, concentrating on the following question: What are the irreducible components of the Hilbert scheme of points? What are their intersections and singularities? An informal, intuitive view of geometry of the components is given on Figure 1 below. Our analysis of the Hilbert scheme as a moduli space of finite algebras requires tools for working with algebras themselves, which are developed in Part I. We then switch our attention to families of algebras (subschemes) in Part II and analyse Hilbert schemes for small numbers of points in Part III. Almost all of our original results presented in this thesis are also found in [Jel14, CJN15, Jel16, BJ17, Jel17, BJJM17]. 1 Figure 1.1: Bellis Hilbertis. Components of the Hilbert scheme of r points on a smooth variety X. Flower, petals and stem correspond to irreducible components of the Hilbert scheme of X. The analysis of their geometry is the main aim of this work. 1 The smoothable component, see Definition 4.23. It compactifies the space of r-tuples of points on X, thus has dimension r(dim X). For small r, it is the only component – there are no “petals” – see Section 5.6, Theorem 6.1 and also Problems 1.16, 1.17. 2 Points of the Hilbert scheme correspond to finite subschemes of X. General points on the smoothable component (“ladybirds”) correspond to tuples of points on X. Thus all subschemes corresponding to points on this component are limits of tuples of points; they are smoothable. 3 Every component intersects the smoothable one, see [Ree95]. Describing the intersection is subtle, see Problem 1.19 and Theorem 6.3 for an example involving cubic fourfolds. It is even hard to decide whether a given subscheme of X is smoothable, see Problem 1.18. 4 There is a single example [EV10], where components intersect away from the smoothable component. No singular points lying on a unique nonsmoothable component are known. 5 There are only few known components of dimension smaller than the smoothable one, see Section 5.6 and Problems 1.22, 1.23. 6 There are many examples of loci too large to fit inside the smoothable component, see Section 5.6, however the components containing these loci are not known. 7 Not much is known about the geometry and singularities of components other than the smoothable one, see Problem 1.13, Problem 1.14. 2 1.1 Overview and main results Part I gathers tools for studying finite local algebras over a field |, especially Gorenstein algebras. In this part, we speak the language of algebra; only basic background on commutative algebras and Lie theory is assumed. Part I is mostly prerequisite, although Sections 3.5-3.9 contain many original results published in [BJMR17, Jel17]. Theory of Macaulay’s inverse systems (also known as apolarity) is a central tool in our investigation. To an element f of a (divided power) polynomial ring P it assigns a finite local Gorenstein algebra Apolar (f), see Section 3.3. A pro-algebraic group G acts on P so that the orbits are isomorphism classes of Apolar ( ), see Section 3.3. In Section 3.6 we explicitly − describe the action of G and investigate its Lie group, building an effective tool to investigate isomorphism classes of algebras. We then give applications; as a sample result, we reprove (with weaker assumptions on the base field) the following main theorems of [ER12, ER15]. Theorem 1.1 (Example 3.35, Corollary 3.73). Let | be a field of characteristic = 2; 3. Let 6 n+1 (A; m; |) be a finite Gorenstein local |-algebra with Hilbert function (1; n; n; 1) or (1; n; 2 ; n; 1). Then A isomorphic to its associated graded algebra gr A. Interestingly, Theorem 1.1 fails for small characteristics, see Example 3.74. We also obtain genuine, down to earth classification results, such as the following. Proposition 1.2 (Example 3.75). Let | be an algebraically closed field of characteristic = 2; 3. 6 There are exactly eleven isomorphism types of finite local Gorenstein algebras with Hilbert func- tion (1; 3; 3; 3; 1), see Example 3.75 for their list. In Part II, our attention shifts towards families of algebras. Accordingly, we change the language from algebra to algebraic geometry, from finite algebras to finite schemes.