Formality for the nilpotent cone and a derived Springer correspondence (Q1941149)

The Springer correspondence relates simple perverse sheaves on the nilpotent cone of a reductive group to representations of the Weyl group. The main result of this paper extends the Springer correspondence to an equivalence of derived categories. Let \(\mathbb{F}\) be the algebraic closure of a finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\) of characteristic \(p\), \(\ell\) a prime not equal to \(p\). Let \(G_0\) be a split connected reductive group over \(\mathbb{F}_q\) and \(G\) be its extension to \(\mathbb{F}\). Let \(\mathcal{N}\) (resp. \(\mathcal{N}_0\)) be the nilpotent cone of \(G\) (resp. \(G_0\)), \(W\) the Weyl group and \(\mathcal{B}\) the flag variety of \(G\). Let \(D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N}) \subset D^b_{G,c}(\mathcal{N})\) denote the triangulated subcategory of the \(\ell\)-adic \(G\)-equivariant constructible derived category generated by the summands of the Springer sheaf \(A\). Assuming that \(p\) and \(q\) are large enough, the main result, Theorem 7.9, states that \(D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N})\) is governed by the algebra \(\mathrm{Ext}^\bullet_{D^b_G(\mathcal{N})}(A,A) \cong \overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# H^\bullet_G(\mathcal{B})\). More precisely, it says that \[ D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N}) \cong \mathcal{D}_f^{dg}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# H^\bullet_G(\mathcal{B})), \] where \(\mathcal{D}_f^{dg}(Q)\) denotes the derived category of finitely generated differential graded modules over a graded algebra \(Q\). The proof is built around the construction of a dg ring \(\mathcal{R}\) and a functor \(D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N}) \to \mathcal{D}^{dg}(\mathcal{R})\) such \(\mathcal{R}\) is formal with cohomology ring \(H^\bullet (\mathcal{R}) = \overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# H^\bullet_G(\mathcal{B})\). The paper is structured as follows. Sections 2-4 consider the general setting of a variety \(X_0\) over \(\mathbb{F}_q\). In Section 2, the author considers a full subcategory \(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0)\) of \(D^b_m(X_0)\) associated to a collection \(\mathcal{S}\) of simple perverse sheaves of weight 0 on \(X_0\) and introduces a notion of Frobenius invariance for such subcategories. In Section 3, a realization functor \(K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0)) \to D^b_m(X_0)\) is constructed when \(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0)\) is Frobenius invariant. In Section 4 the author shows that the functor \[ K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0)) \to D^b_m(X_0) \to D^b_c(X) \] makes \(K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0))\) into a mixed version of \(D^b_c(X)\). The section concludes the definition of a second, nonstandard t-structure on \(K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0))\) with heart \(\mathrm{Perv}_{KD}(X_0)\). In Section 5, the above machinery is applied to \(X_0= \mathcal{N}_0\) and \(\mathcal{S}\) the set of summands of the Springer sheaf, in which case \(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{G}(\mathcal{N}_0):=\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{\mathcal{S}}(X_0)\). Section 6 proves an equivalence \(K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{G}(\mathcal{N}_0)) \cong D^b(\mathrm{gMod}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# H^\bullet_G(\mathcal{B}))).\) The algebra on the right hand side is known to be Koszul with Koszul dual \(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# \bigwedge \mathfrak h\). Hence \(K^b(\mathcal{P}\mathrm{ure}_{G}(\mathcal{N}_0)) \cong D^b(\mathrm{gMod}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# \bigwedge \mathfrak h)).\) Theorem 7.1 shows that this equivalence takes the standard t-structure on the right hand side to the nonstandard t-structure constructed at the end of section 4. The category \(\mathrm{gMod}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# \bigwedge \mathfrak h)\) is known to have enough injectives and projectives and thus the same is true of \(\mathrm{Perv}_{KD}(X_0)\). The author then uses this fact to construct a resolution \(\tilde{P}^\bullet\) of the Springer sheaf \(A\) by projective objects in \(\mathrm{Perv}_{KD}(X_0)\). Applying the functor from Sections 4 and 5 to \(\tilde{P}^\bullet\) gives a chain complex \(P^\bullet \in C^-D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N})\). The dg ring \(\mathcal{R}\) is defined as an Ext algebra of \(P^\bullet\). The functor \(D^b_{G,Spr}(\mathcal{N}) \to \mathcal{D}^{dg}(\mathcal{R})\) is defined by \(\mathcal{H}\mathrm{om}(P^\bullet,-)\). The proof concludes by showing that \(\mathcal{R}\) is formal and that the functor \(\mathcal{H}\mathrm{om}(P^\bullet,-)\) is full and faithful with essential image \(\mathcal{D}_f^{dg}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_\ell[W] \# H^\bullet_G(\mathcal{B}))\). As \(P^\bullet\) is not an object in a triangulated category, some care is needed to show, for example, that \(\mathcal{H}\mathrm{om}(P^\bullet,-)\) is a triangulated functor. This is done in the Appendix.