Compactification of the moduli space of minimal instantons on the Fano 3-fold \(V_5\) (Q2200948)

Mathematical instanton bundles were defined on \(\mathbb{P}^3\) in order to classify Yang-Mills instantons on the sphere \(S^4\). They are stable vector bundles and the properties of their moduli spaces (irreducibility, rationality, smoothness,\dots) have been the object of intense research. The notion of instanton bundle has been generalized by Faenzi and Kuznetsov to Fano threefolds of Picard number one. Given a Fano threefold \(X\) of index two and Picard number one, with \(\omega_X\cong\mathcal{O}_X(-2)\), \(\mathcal{O}_X(1)\) being the ample generator of the Picard group, they defined an instanton bundle \(\mathcal{E}\) on \(X\) as a stable rank two vector bundle with first Chern class \(c_1(\mathcal{E})=0\) and satisfying the instantonic condition \(H^1(\mathcal{E}(-1))=0\). Since it is possible to show that for instanton bundles it holds that \(c_2(\mathcal{E})\geq 2\), those satisfying the equality are called minimal instanton bundles. They have a particular important property: for a minimal instanton bundle \(\mathcal{E}\), it turns out that \(\mathcal{E}(1)\) is an Ulrich bundle, namely \(H^i(\mathcal{E}(t))=0\) for \(i=0,\dots,3\) and \(t\in\{-2,-1,0\}\). In the paper under review the author focuses on the Fano threefold \(V_5\), defined as a general codimension three lineal section in the Plücker embedding of the Grassmannian \(G(2,5)\). The moduli spaces of instanton bundles on \(V_5\) were studied by Kuznetsov using nets of quadrics and they turned out not to be projective in general. Along these lines, the main result of this paper shows that there exists an irreducible component \(M\) of the moduli space of rank \(2\) semistable sheaves with Chern classes \(c_1=0,c_2=2\) and \(c_3=0\) on \(V_5\) which is isomorphic to \(\mathbb{P}^5\) and which provides a natural smooth compactification of the moduli space of minimal instanton bundles (and therefore rank two Ulrich bundles). This result is obtained by identifying \(M\) with a certain moduli space of semistable representations of the Kronecker quiver \(Q_3\).