The Decomposition Theorem and the Intersection Cohomology of Quotients in Algebraic Geometry

We study linear actions of algebraic groups on smooth projective varieties X. A guiding goal for us is to understand the cohomology of "quotients" under such actions, by generalizing (from reductive to non-reductive group actions) existing methods involving Mumford's geometric invariant theory (GIT). We concentrate on actions of unipotent groups H, and define sets of stable points X^s and semistable points X^{ss}, often explicitly computable via the methods of reductive GIT, ...

In this article we review the question of constructing geometric quotients of actions of linear algebraic groups on irreducible varieties over algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero, in the spirit of Mumford's geometric invariant theory (GIT). The article surveys some recent work on geometric invariant theory and quotients of varieties by linear algebraic group actions, as well as background material on linear algebraic groups, Mumford's GIT and some of the challe...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a way to compute the intersection cohomology of the GIT quotient of a nonsingular projective variety. We show that the middle perversity intersection cohomology of the GIT quotient $M//G$ is naturally embedded into the $G$ equivariant cohomology of $M^{ss}$ under an assumption satisfied by many interesting spaces. This embedding enables us to compute the intersection pairing in terms of the cup product structure of the equivariant cohom...

The article investigates the following question: given a projective variety X acted on by a connected and reductive group G, which is the relationship between the Gromov-Witten invariants of X and those of X//G? In this study we shall also try to give an algebraic approach to the so called Hamiltonian Gromov-Witten invariants which have appeared rather recenly in the literature.

Fix a scheme $X$ over a field of characteristic zero that is equipped with an action of a reductive algebraic group $G$. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a $G$-equivariant coherent sheaf on $X$ or a bounded-above complex of $G$-equivariant coherent sheaves on $X$ to descend to a good quotient $X//G$. This gives a description of the coherent derived category of $X//G$ as an admissible subcategory of the equivariant derived category of $X$.

We extend the methods of geometric invariant theory to actions of non--reductive groups in the case of homomorphisms between decomposable sheaves whose automorphism groups are non--reductive. Given a linearization of the natural action of the group $\Aut(E)\times\Aut(F)$ on Hom(E,F), a homomorphism is called stable if its orbit with respect to the unipotent radical is contained in the stable locus with respect to the natural reductive subgroup of the automorphism group. We en...

When a reductive group $G$ acts linearly on a complex projective scheme $X$ there is a stratification of $X$ into $G$-invariant locally closed subschemes, with an open stratum $X^{ss}$ formed by the semistable points in the sense of Mumford's geometric invariant theory which has a categorical quotient $X^{ss} \to X//G$. In this article we describe a method for constructing quotients of the unstable strata. As an application, we construct moduli spaces of sheaves of fixed Hard...

Let $U$ be a graded unipotent group over the complex numbers, in the sense that it has an extension $\hat{U}$ by the multiplicative group such that the action of the multiplicative group by conjugation on the Lie algebra of $U$ has all its weights strictly positive. Given any action of $U$ on a projective variety $X$ extending to an action of $\hat{U}$ which is linear with respect to an ample line bundle on $X$, then provided that one is willing to replace the line bundle wit...

In this paper we develop an equivariant intersection theory for actions of algebraic groups on algebraic schemes. The theory is based on our construction of equivariant Chow groups. They are algebraic analogues of equivariant cohomology groups which satsify the formal properties of ordinary Chow groups. In addition, they enjoy many of the properties of equivariant cohomology. The principal results are: (1) We prove the existence of canonical intersection products on the Chow ...

The aim of this paper is to show that classical geometric invariant theory (GIT) has an effective analogue for linear actions of a non-reductive algebraic group $H$ with graded unipotent radical on a projective scheme $X$. Here the linear action of $H$ is required to extend to a semi-direct product $\hat{H} = H \rtimes \mathbb{G}_m$ with a multiplicative one-parameter group which acts on the Lie algebra of the unipotent radical $U$ of $H$ with all weights strictly positive, a...