Inertia forms and resultant: A formulary (Q1355472)

This is the second part of a two part paper. The first appeared in Adv. Math. 114, No. 1, 1-174 (1995; see the preceding review). This paper consists of parts 3.9 through 3.11. This paper is a continuation of the author's work on various aspects of elimination and resultant. For the earlier relevant articles see Adv. Math. 37, 212-238 (1980; Zbl 0527.13005) and 90, No. 2, 117-263 (1991; Zbl 0747.13007). These papers are rather long and thus difficult to go over completely in this short review. I will just describe the basic problem that is being tackled. Let \(\kappa\) be a scheme and \(E\) a rank \(n\) locally free sheaf over \(\kappa\). Let \(r\geq 1\) be an integer and let \(d_1,\ldots, d_r\) be positive integers. Let \[ A=\text{Sym}_{\kappa} \Bigl(\bigoplus_{i=1}^r\text{Sym}^{d_i}(E)^* \Bigr) \] and \(S=\text{Spec} A\). Let \(C=A\otimes_{\kappa} \text{Sym}_{\kappa}(E)\). One has the canonical section \[ {\mathcal O}_{\kappa}\to \text{Sym}^{d_i}(E)^*\otimes \text{ Sym}^{d_i}(E) \] and thus one has a natural map \(f_i:C(-d_i)\to C\), a \(C\)-module homomorphism. Essentially \(f_i\) corresponds to the `universal homogeneous polynomial' of degree \(d_i\). Let \(B=C/(f_1,\ldots, f_r)\) and \(X=\text{ Proj} B\). We have the natural projective morphism from \(X\to S\) and let \(T\) be the image of \(X\). The basic issue of elimination theory from the view point of invariant theory is to describe \(T\), in terms of the representations of \(\text{ Aut}_{\kappa}(E)\). Let me briefly describe what are \textit{inertia forms}. If \(B\) is as above, we have a natural \(A\)-algebra homomorphism, \(B\to \bigoplus_{\nu} \text{ H}^0(X,{\mathcal O}_X(\nu))\) and let \(I\) be its kernel (this is just the 0-th local cohomology). Then \(I\) is called the ideal of the forms of inertia. Notice that \(I\) is graded and the degree 0 part gives an ideal in \(A\) which precisely describes the image of \(X\) in \(S\). Thus computing this ideal in particular computes the ideal defining the image of \(X\) in \(S\) and thus this problem contains the problem of elimination. This part of the paper deals with many classical formulas, with generalisations and corrected proofs of results in the literature. The paper is long, but self contained. It is an excellent piece for later references. There are formulas attributed to Macaulay and inertia forms studied by Sylvester and Morley amongst others. That the bibliography reads like a who's-who of early 20th century algebra, I think, should convey the spirit of the work. In conclusion, this paper is a very exhaustive treatment of the subject, where references in this generality are hard to come by.