The local Euler obstruction and topology of the stabilization of associated determinantal varieties (Q2633092)

After explaining the local Euler obstruction and ways to compute it the authors consider the case of generic determinantal varieties. At the point \(p=0\) of the generic determinantal variety \(\Sigma^s\subset\operatorname{Hom}(\mathbb{C}^n,\mathbb{C}^{n+k})\), consisting of matrices of rank less than \(s\), the local Euler obstruction \(e(s,n)\) is given by the simple formula \(\binom n{s-1}\). This result is applied to compute the Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson class of such varieties. In the second part the authors use the results in the study of essentially isolated determinantal singularities. They give a formula for the Euler characteristic in terms of the local Euler obstruction and Gaffney's \(m_d\) multiplicity. By imposing conditions on the singularity \(X\) they achieve that it is such a good approximation to the generic determinantal variety, that most of the terms in the formula come from it. This raises the question of the functoriality of the Euler obstruction, which in turn motivates the definition of the Euler obstruction of a module.