Affine pavings for moduli spaces of pure sheaves on \(\mathbb P^2\) with degree \(\leq 5\) (Q2516436)

An affine paving of an algebraic scheme is a decomposition into a disjoint union of a finite number of locally closed schemes isomorphic to affine spaces. This article studies moduli spaces of rank \(0\), degree \(d\), pure sheaves on \(\mathbb{P}^{2}\) with Euler characteristic \(r\). Previous work of the author [Pure Appl. Math. Q. 10, No. 4, 723--766 (2014; Zbl 1320.14017)] computes a motivic decomposition of the Grothendieck ring of these moduli spaces into affine pieces, and the present paper shows that this decomposition is also cellular, proving that the moduli spaces admit an affine paving for the cases \(d\leq 5\) and g.c.d \((d,r)=1\) (cf. Theorem 1.1) The proof of this result is done by computing disjoint affine decompositions for the \((\mathbb{C}^{\ast})^{2}\)-fixed loci of the moduli spaces and, by using a result of Bialynicki-Birula, getting affine pavings for each case. To do that, the points of the moduli are seen as stable pairs given by a split vector bundle \(E\) on \(\mathbb{P}^{2}\) and a twisted endomorphism of \(E\). The different strata are given by the possible degrees of the splitting and the behavior of the endomorphism. This, together with the role played by the torus action, make things computable arriving to the number of points, lines and planes on which fixed loci can be decomposed. The paper also conjectures that all moduli spaces for any \(d\) with no properly semistable sheaves (this is, \(r\) and \(d\) being coprime) admit such an affine paving.