NORTHEASTERN U NIVERSITY
MATHEMATICS D EPARTMENT

Geometry-Algebra-Singularities-Combinatorics 
Seminar

 
Divided powers and discriminants
 

Roy Skjelnes

(KTH, Stockholm)

Northeastern University

509 Lake Hall

1:30 p.m., Monday, November 18, 2002

Abstract:There exists, due to M. Haiman, an explicite blow-up construction of the Hilbert scheme of points in the affine complex plane. In that construction one gets the generators of an ideal $I$ in the $n$-fold symmetric product of the plane, and the blow-up of the $n$-fold symmetric product with center definied by $I$ is the Hilbert scheme.

It is interesting to see how much of this construction that can be generalized. At least one can expect a simliar construction of the Hilbert scheme of points on any smooth surface $X$.

The Grothendieck-Deligne norm map $n$ is a morphism from $H$ the Hilbert scheme of points on a scheme $X$ to the symmetric product of $X$. In the talk we will discuss that morphism, and then we will construct a subscheme $Q$ of the symmetric product, whose scheme theoretic inverse by the morphism $n$ is the discriminant of the universal family $Z -> H$.

If $X$ is a smooth surface then we know that the discriminant is an effective Cartier divisor, giving an induced morphism to the blow up of the symmetric product along $Q$. It is an open question wheter that induced morphism from the Hilbert scheme $H$ to the blow-up is an isomorphism.