Topics on the geometry of rational homogeneous spaces (Q2199104)

Rational homogeneous varieties are quotients \(G/P\), where \(G\) is a semi-simple algebraic group and \(P\) is a parabolic subgroup. The paper under review is a survey of the main properties, and open questions, of such projective manifolds. In the second section, the connection of these varieties with Fano varieties, varieties of lines, and Dynkin diagrams is extensively described. In the third section, the author introduces the Borel-Weil theory. This starts from the fact that the space of global sections of a nef line bundle on \(G/P\) is an irreducible \(G\)-module. This permits the construction of varieties (like Fano or Calabi-Yau) as sections of vector bundles on rational homogeneous varieties. These sections are used in many ways: flops, Grothendieck ring of varieties, representations with Hasse diagrams of finitely many \(G\)-orbits, and applications to linear sections. The next section is dedicated to Kempf collapsing. If \(E\) is a homogeneous bundle on \(G/P\) whose dual bundle is globally generated, then the total space \(Tot(E)\) embeds inside \(G/P\times H^{0}(G/P,E^{\vee})^{\vee}\). The Kempf collapsing of \(E\) is the restriction of second projection \(Tot(E)\rightarrow H^{0}(G/P,E^{\vee})^{\vee}\). A lot of classical constructions can be seen as applications of Kempf collapsing. The determinant locus of morphisms of rank at most \(k\) in \(\mathrm{Hom}(\mathbb{C}^{n},\mathbb{C}^{m})\) is the image of a Kempf collapsing. In the case when a Kempf collapsing is a crepant resolution, a general section of \(E\) will vanish on a subvariety of \(G/P\) with trivial canonical bundle. Beauville-Donagi and Debarre-Voisin varieties can be seen in this fashion. Other examples of Kempf collapsing are Springer resolution (basically when \(E=\Omega_{G/P}\)) and stratified Mukai flops. The last application is projective duality: If \(X\subset\mathbb{P}(V)\) is a smooth projective variety, then the affine cone over the projective dual of \(X\) is the image of a Kempf collapsing. The author discusses some interesting instances of Kuznetsov's Homological Projective Duality obtained when \(V=\bigwedge^{2}(\mathbb{C}^{n})^{\vee}\) for \(n=5,6,7\). The last section is a short introduction to usual and orbital degeneration locus.