The equivariant cohomology of hypertoric varieties and their real loci (Q2583312)

The basic idea of the theorem of \textit{M.~Goresky, R.~Kottwitz} and \textit{R.~MacPherson} [Invent. Math. 131, No. 1, 25--83 (1998; Zbl 0897.22009)] can be described as follows. For a compact Hamiltonian \(T\) space \(M\) the inclusion \(M^ T \hookrightarrow M\) induces an injection \(H_ T^ *(M;\mathbb Q)\hookrightarrow H_ T^ *(M^ T;\mathbb Q)\) in equivariant cohomology. Since \(T\) acts trivially on \(M^ T\), when \(M^ T\) consists of isolated points, the ring \(H_ T^ *(M^ T;\mathbb Q)\) is a direct product of polynomial rings \(H_ T^ *(M;\mathbb Q)\cong \prod_{p\in M^ T} H_ T^ *(p;\mathbb Q) \cong \prod_{p\in M^ T}\text{Sym}({\mathfrak t}^ *)\). Hence, in order to compute the equivariant cohomology ring \(H_ T^ *(M;\mathbb Q)\), it suffices to identify its image in \(H_ T^ *(M^ T;\mathbb Q)\). In addition, if the \(T\)-isotropy weights \(\{\alpha_{p,i}\}\) are pairwise linearly independent at each fixed point \(p\), then the image of \(H_ T^ *(M;\mathbb Q)\) in \(H_ T^ *(M^ T;\mathbb Q)\) is the same as that of the one-skeleton of \(M\), which in turn can be described combinatorially in terms of a graph \(\Gamma\) and the \(T\)-isotropy data. Thus, the computation of \(H_ T^ *(M;\mathbb Q)\) is translated into a problem of combinatorics. In this paper, the authors present two main results and demonstrate their use through several explicit computations. In the first result, they generalize the theorem of Goresky, Kottwitz, and MacPherson to the non-compact setting that computes \(T = T^ n\)-equivariant cohomology rings of compact Hamiltonian \(T\) spaces satisfying some conditions. When \(M\) is equipped with an antisymplectic involution \(\sigma\) that anticommutes with the action of \(T\), the authors extend to the non-compact setting the ``mod 2'' versions of these results to the real locus \(Q = M^ \sigma\) of \(M\). These results are applied in detail to the hypertoric varieties of \textit{R.~Bielawski} and \textit{A.~S.~Dancer} [Commun. Anal. Geom. 8, No. 4, 727--760 (2000; Zbl 0992.53034)], using a torus action.