The degrees of varieties of nilpotent matrices (Q2488315)

Let \(\alpha \in M_{n}\left( \mathbb{C}\right) \) be a nilpotent matrix. The purpose of this paper is to calculate the degree of the closure of the conjugacy class of \(\alpha .\) For each partition \(\lambda =\left( \lambda _{1},\dots ,\lambda _{t}\right) \) of \(n\) with \(\lambda _{i}\geq \lambda _{i+1},\) let \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }^{0} \) be the set of nilpotent matrices with Jordan form given by \(\lambda \) which are fixed by conjugation. Thus we can view\(\;\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }\subset \mathbb{P}\left( \text{Hom}\left( \mathbb{C}^{n},\mathbb{C} ^{n}\right) \right) .\) Denote by \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }\) the closure of the conjugacy class of \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }^{0}.\) If \(E\) be a fibre bundle for a scheme \(X\) satisfying certain conditions, then there is a natural embedding \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }^{0}\left( E\right) \subset \mathbb{J} _{\lambda }\left( E\right) \subset \mathbb{P}\left( \text{Hom}\left( E,E\right) \right) \). The degree of \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }\) is described recursively using cohomology classes of a relative Grassmannian which depends on the rank \(r\) of the fibres \(E\rightarrow X.\) For a certain \( R\subset E\) it is proved that \(\dim _{X}\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }\left( E\right) =\dim _{X}\mathbb{J}_{\lambda ^{\ast }}\left( R\right) +2r(n-r)\) where \( \mathbb{\lambda }^{\ast }=\left( \lambda _{1}-1,\dots ,\lambda _{t}-1\right) .\) Additionally, there is an attempt to give a recursive free description of the degree of \(\mathbb{J}_{\lambda }.\) Indeed, it is shown to be equal to the degree of the maximal Segre class of the cotangent fibre of a certain variety. Numerous examples are given as well. For instance, it is shown that the degree of \(\mathbb{J}_{\left( 3,3,2,2,1,1\right) }=7,851,268,322,287,104.\)