Regularity of the moduli space of instanton bundles \(MI_{\mathbb{P}^3}\)(5) (Q1397610)

The authors study the moduli space \(MI_{\mathbb{P}^3}(n)\) of rank two vector bundles \({\mathcal E}\) on \(\mathbb{P}^3\) with \(c_1({\mathcal E})=0\), \(c_2({\mathcal E})=n>0\) and \(H^0({\mathcal E})=H^1({\mathcal E}(-2))=0\). These so-called instanton bundles can be described as the cohomology of a monad \({\mathcal O}(-1)^n\rightarrow {\mathcal O}^{2n+2}\rightarrow {\mathcal O}(1)^n\). The smoothness of \(MI_{\mathbb{P}^3}(n)\) is a part of the instanton conjecture and has been shown for small second Chern classes \(n\leq 4\). The authors extend this to the case \(n\leq 5\), giving a unified proof which offers also a new approach to the known cases. The rather technical proof is based on an invariant theoretic description of the moduli space, estimates for unstable planes and several dimension counts combined with linear algebraic calculations. Independently, \textit{I. Coanda, A.S. Tikhomirov} and \textit{G. Trautmann} [Int. J. Math. 14, No.1, 1--45 (2003; Zbl 1059.14018)] recently proved both the smoothness and the irreducibility of \(MI_{\mathbb{P}^3}(n)\) for \(n\leq 5\).