Varieties of pairs of nilpotent matrices annihilating each other (Q1881557)

Let \(K\) be an algebraically closed field. For positive integers \(l\) and \(n\) let \(N( n,l) \) be the variety of \(n\times n\) matrices \(A\) such that \(A^{l}=0.\) Furthermore, let \(Z( n) \) be the set of pairs of \( n\times n\) matrices \(( A,B) \) such that \(AB=BA=0.\) The object of study is the variety \(V( n,a,b) =( N(n,a)\times N( n,b) ) \cap Z(n)=\{ ( A,B) \mid A^{a}=B^{b}=AB=BA=0\} .\) Specifically, the author classifies the irreducible components of \(V( n,a,b) .\) In one special case it is shown that the irreducible components of \(V( n,n,n) \) are all of the form \(\{ ( A,B) \mid \text{rank }( A) \leq n-i,\;\text{rank}( B) \leq i\} \) for each \(i\) less than \(n\).\ Furthermore, it is shown that each component has dimension \(n^{2}-n+1.\) More generally, let \(\mathcal{P}( n,a) \) be the set of partitions \(\mathbf{p}=( p_{1},\ldots ,p_{t}) \) of \(n\) such that \(p_{i}\leq a \) for all \(i\). We write \(l( \mathbf{p}) =t\) when there are \(t\) elements in the partition. Given a partition \(\mathbf{p}\) we let \(C( \mathbf{p}) \) be the subset of \(N( n,a) \) consisting of all matrices whose Jordan block sizes are given by \(\mathbf{ p.}\) There are natural projection maps \(\pi _{1}:V( n,a,b) \to N( n,a) \) and \(\pi _{2}:V( n,a,b) \to N( n,b) .\) The standard stratification of \(V( n,a,b) \) is defined to be \(\mathcal{P}( n,a,b) =\mathcal{P} ( n,a) \times \mathcal{P}( n,b) ,\) and for \(( \mathbf{a,b}) \in \mathcal{P}( n,a,b) \) we let \(\Delta ( \mathbf{a,b}) =\pi _{1}^{-1}( C( \mathbf{a}) ) \cap \pi _{2}^{-1}( C( \mathbf{b}) ) .\) A pair \(( \mathbf{a,b}) \in \mathcal{P}( n,a,b) \) is regular if \(l( \mathbf{a}) +l( \mathbf{b}) =n\) and\(\mathbf{\;} l( \mathbf{a}-1) =l( \mathbf{b}-1) \). Under certain circumstances the closure of \(\Delta ( \mathbf{a,b}) \) is an irreducible component of \(V( n,a,b) ,\) where \(( \mathbf{a,b} ) \) is regular. An irreducible component of \(V( n,a,b) \) is called regular if it contains a regular element, i.e. a pair \(( A,B) \) with rank\( ( A) +\)rank\(( B) =n.\) Finally, it is shown that the set of regular elements is dense in \(V( n,a,b) \) is and only if \( n\leq a+b-2\) or \(n=a+b.\) The non-regular components are also classified, but it takes a bit more work.