Gap probabilities and Betti numbers of a random intersection of quadrics (Q262317)

The authors study the asymptotic behaviour of the (sums of) Betti numbers of the intersection of \(k\) random quadrics in the real projective space \(\mathbb P_{\mathbb R}{n}\) as \(n\to\infty\). Here, quadrics are represented by symmetric matrices~\(Q\) which are distributed (up to normalization) via \(\exp\bigl(-\frac12\text{tr}Q^2\bigr)dQ\), where \(dQ\) is the Lebesgue measure. It is shown that the expectation of each individual Betti number tends to~\(1\); more precisely, one has \(\mathbb E b_i(X)=1+O(n^{-M})\) for each \(M>0\). A similar statement holds for the sum of several Betty numbers that are \textit{sufficiently far from the middle dimension}. The contribution of the middle Betti numbers is known only for \(k=2\): for the total Betti number \(b_*\) one has \[ \mathbb E b_*(X)=n+\frac2{\sqrt\pi}n^{1/2}+O(n^c)\quad\text{for any \(c>0\)}. \] In general, it is conjectured that the contribution of the middle Betti numbers is asymptotic to \(n^{(k-1)/2}\).