Syzygies of Segre embeddings and \(\Delta\)-modules (Q1939194)

In this review, we attempt to introduce the very interesting results in the paper of Snowden, following closely the author's exposition. Let \((V,L)\) be a family of vector spaces, namely for each \(x\in L\), we have a \(\mathbb C\)-vector space \(V_x\). Let \(R(V,L)\) be the projective coordinate ring of \(\prod_{x\in L}\mathbb P(V_x)\) and \(P(V,L)\) the projective coordinate ring of \(\mathbb P(\bigotimes_{x\in L}V_x)\). The Segre embedding \(\prod_{x\in L}\mathbb P(V_x) \subseteq \mathbb P(\bigotimes_{x\in L}V_x)\) induces a surjection \(P(V,L)\to R(V,L)\). For each \(p\geq 1\), let \(F_p(V,L)\) be the \(\mathbb C\)-module \(\text{Tor}^{P(V,L)}_p(R(V,L),\mathbb C)\), called the \(p\)-th space of syzygy of \(R(V,L)\) over \(P(V,L)\). For example, \(F_1\) is the degree 2 part of the defining equations of the Segre embedding. We have that \(F_p\) is a functor from the category \(\text{Vec}^{\Delta}\) to \(\text{Vec}\). Here \(\text{Vec}\) denotes the category of vector spaces over \(\mathbb C\) and \(\text{Vec}^{\Delta}\) is the category with objects being parametrized family of vector spaces. We denote such a family by \((V,L)\) where for each \(x\in L\), we have a vector space \(V_x\). A morphism \((V,L)\to (V',L')\) in \(\text{Vec}^{\Delta}\) is given by a surjection \(L'\to L\) and a \(\mathbb C\)-linear map \(V_x \to \otimes_{y\mapsto x}V'_y\) for each \(x\in L\). The functor \(F_p\) is a typical example of a \(\Delta\)-module, a central concept of this paper. The first main result of the paper, very surprisingly, states that for fixed \(p\), up to symmetry, there exists a finite list of syzygies which generate the whole list of \(p\)-th syzygies of Segre embeddings for varying parametrized family \((V,L)\). Formally, we have Theorem A: The \(\Delta\)-module \(F_p\) is finitely generated. The second main result gives more detailed description of \(F_p(V,L)\) for specific \(V\) and \(L\). Assume that \(L\) has cardinality \(n\), say \(L=\{1,\ldots,n\}\) where \(n\geq 1\). For each partition \(\lambda\) of \(n\), denote by \(S_{\lambda}\) the Schur functor associated to \(\lambda\). From the equivariance of \(F_p\), we have \[ F_p(V_1,\ldots,V_n)=\bigoplus_{i\in I_{p,n}}S_{\lambda_{1,i}}(V_1)\otimes \cdots \otimes S_{\lambda_{n,i}}(V_n) \] for some finite set \(I_{p,n}\) and partitions \(\lambda_{1,i},\ldots,\lambda_{n,i}\). These sets and partitions depend only on \(p,n\) and not on \(V_1,\ldots,V_n\). Hence the information about \(F_{p,n}\) (\(=F_p(V_1,\ldots,V_n)\)) can be encoded by \[ f_{p,n}^*=\sum_{i\in I_{p,n}}s_{\lambda_{1,i}}\cdots s_{\lambda_{n,i}}, \] where \(s_{i,j}\) are formal variables which commute with each other. It can be proved that there are finitely many variables \(s_{\lambda}\) showing up in \(f^*_{p,n}\) where \(n=1,2,\ldots,\). Another delicate structural statement of the paper, the second main result, says Theorem B: For each \(p\), the series \(f_p^*=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}f_{p,n}^*\) is a rational function of the \(s_{\lambda}\). The two main results are deduced from the general framework of twisted commutative algebra and \(\Delta\)-modules, namely algebras and modules with certain equivariant structures. Theorem A corresponds to a noetherianity of modules result while Theorem B corresponds to a rationality of Hilbert series statement. However, the algebras and modules involved usually have infinite Krull dimension and infinite homological dimension, therefore the arguments are usually delicate and require many reduction steps. The author shows that the main results also apply to tangent and secant varieties of Segre embeddings. Many open questions are listed at the end of the paper.