Extremal transition and quantum cohomology: examples of toric degeneration (Q2374210)

Let \(X_{\mathrm{sing}}\) be a Gorenstein normal projective variety admitting a projective crepant resolution \(\pi : X_{\mathrm{res}} \to X_{\mathrm{sing}}\) and a projective smoothing \(r:X_{\mathrm{sm}}\to X_{\mathrm{sing}}\) via the extremal transition. The famous conifold transition of the Calabi-Yau threefolds is a special case of this construction. The paper under review studies the change of quantum cohomology under extremal transition. \textit{A.-M. Li} and \textit{Y. Ruan} [Invent. Math. 145, No. 1, 151--218 (2001; Zbl 1062.53073)] studied the change of Gromov-Witten invariants and functoriality of quantum cohomology under threefold conifold transitions. The first main result of the paper under review is reinterpreting Li-Ruan theorem by describing the quantum cohomology \(QH^* (X_{sm})\) as a subquotient of \(QH^* (X_{\mathrm{res}})\) with respect to a certain filtration given by monodromy and relating the corresponding Dubrovin quantum connections. The next result of the paper is demonstrating a similar phenomena for higher dimensional extremal transitions in some examples thorough explicit calculations. A partial flag variety admits a flat degeneration to a singular Gorenstein toric variety, which in turn admits a toric crepant resolution. In this paper the extremal transitions of \(\mathrm{Fl}(1, 2, 3)\), \(\mathrm{Gr}(2, 4)\) and \(\mathrm{Gr}(2, 5)\) are studied by explicit computations. Besides the analogous results to dimension three, some new phenomena occur in the last two examples.