The sum of the Betti numbers of smooth Hilbert schemes (Q2114800)

In this paper, the authors compute the sum of Betti numbers of smooth Hilbert schemes on the complex projective spaces. For fixed positive integer \(n\) and polynomial \(p(t)\), let \(\mathbb P^{n[p]}\) denote the Hilbert scheme of closed subschemes of the complex projective space \(\mathbb P^{n}\) with Hilbert polynomial \(p(t)\). It is previously known that the Hilbert scheme \(\mathbb P^{n[p]}\) is nonempty if and only if \(p(t)= \sum_{i=1}^r \binom{t+\lambda_i - i}{\lambda_i - 1}\) for some integer partition \(\lambda = (\lambda_1, \ldots, \lambda_r)\) satisfying \(\lambda = (n+1)\), \(r = 0\), or \(n \ge \lambda_1 \ge \ldots \ge \lambda_r \ge 1\). Moreover, \(\mathbb P^{n[p]}\) is smooth if and only if one of the following seven cases is true: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] \(n \le 2\); \item[2.] \(\lambda_r \ge 2\); \item[3.] \(\lambda = (1)\) or \(\lambda = (n^{r-2}, \lambda_{r-1}, 1)\) where \(r \ge 2\); \item[4.] \(\lambda = (n^{r-s-3}, \lambda_{r-s-2}^{s+2}, 1)\) where \(r \ge s+3\); \item[5.] \(\lambda = (n^{r-s-5}, 2^{s+4}, 1)\) where \(r \ge s+5\); \item[6.] \(\lambda = (n^{r-3}, 1^3)\) where \(r \ge 3\); \item[7.] \(\lambda = (n+1)\) or \(r = 0\). \end{itemize} The main theorem of the paper presents explicit formulas for the sum \(H_{n, \lambda}\) of the Betti numbers of \(\mathbb P^{n[p]}\) in the above seven cases except Case~2. For instance, \[ H_{n, \lambda} = \binom{n+r-2}{r-2} \binom{n+1}{\lambda_{r-1}} (n + 1 - \lambda_{r-1})(\lambda_{r-1} + 1) \] when \(\lambda = (n^{r-2}, \lambda_{r-1}, 1)\) is in Case 3 with \(n > \lambda_{r-1} > 1\). The main ideas in the proofs are to use the \(\mathrm{PGL}(n + 1)\)-action on \(\mathbb P^{n[p]}\) induced from the \(\mathrm{PGL}(n + 1)\)-action on \(\mathbb P^{n}\) and to apply the classical theorem of A.~Bialynicki-Birula. These ideas enable the authors to translate the computation of the ranks of the homology groups into counting saturated monomial ideals and then to translate that into counting choices of orthants in an \((n + 1)\)-dimensional lattice.