On the Beauville form of the known irreducible symplectic varieties (Q2464026)

In this paper, the second Betti number, the Beauville form and the Fujiki constant of O'Grady's ten-dimensional irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifold \(M_{10}\) are determined. These fundamental invariants were calculated before for all the other known-to-date irreducible symplectic varieties: for the Hilbert scheme \(X^{[n]}\) of zero-dimensional subschemes of length \(n\) on a \(K3\)-surface \(X\) and for the generalised Kummer varieties by \textit{A. Beauville} [J.\ Differ.\ Geom. 18, 755--782 (1983; Zbl 0537.53056)] as well as for O'Grady's six-dimensional example by the author in [Math. Z. 256, No. 1, 1--34 (2007; Zbl 1121.14014)]. A connected complex Kähler manifold is called an irreducible holomorphic symplectic manifold, if it is simply connected and if its space of global holomorphic \(2\)-forms is generated by a form which is non-degenerate at every point. Such manifolds are interesting, because they are the least understood building blocks in Bogomolov's decomposition theorem for compact Kähler manifolds with torsion first Chern class. In the paper under review, the author first shows that the second Betti number of \(M_{10}\) is equal to \(24\). It was known before that \(b_{2}(M_{10})\geq 24\). To establish equality, a theorem of \textit{D. Huybrechts} [J. Differ. Geom. 45, No. 3, 488--513 (1997; Zbl 0917.53010)] is used which says that birationally equivalent irreducible symplectic varieties are deformation equivalent. This allows to use birational models for \(M_{10}\) which are better understood than the one which is used in the construction of \(M_{10}\). As a consequence, it is possible to describe an explicit basis of the second cohomology group of \(M_{10}\). This basis is used to prove that the Beauville form of \(M_{10}\) is isomorphic to the orthogonal sum of \(3\) copies of the standard hyperbolic form of rank two, \(2\) copies of \(-E_8\) and a rank two form with matrix \(\bigl({-2\atop 1}{1\atop -2}\bigr)\). The Fujiki constant turns out to be equal to \(945\), which coincides with the Fujiki constant of the ten-dimensional Hilbert scheme \(X^{[5]}\).