On the normality of orbit closures which are hypersurfaces. (Q263855)

Let \(Q=(Q_0,Q_1)\) be a quiver and \(\mathbf d=(d_i)_{i\in Q_0}\) be a dimension vector. Let \(\mathrm{rep}_Q(\mathbf d)\) be the space of \(\mathbf d\)-dimensional representations of \(Q\) over a fixed algebraically closed field \(k\). The group \(\mathrm{GL}(\mathbf d):=\bigoplus\mathrm{GL}(d_i,k)\) acts on \(\mathrm{rep}_Q(\mathbf d)\) by conjugation, and the orbits correspond to isomorphism classes of \(\mathbf d\)-dimensional representations of \(Q\). For \(N\in\mathrm{rep}_Q(\mathbf d)\) we denote its orbit by \(\mathcal O_N\) and its Zariski closure by \(\overline{\mathcal O}_N\). Denote by \(kQ\) the path algebra for \(Q\), and let \(\mathrm{Ann}(N)\) be the annihilator ideal of \(N\) in \(kQ\). Suppose \(\mathrm{Ann}(N)\) is non-zero and admissible (that is, \(\mathcal R_Q^r\subseteq\mathrm{Ann}(N)\subseteq\mathcal R_Q^2\) for some \(r\), where \(\mathcal R\) is the ideal of \(kQ\) generated by \(Q_1\)). The main result of the work under review is that if \(\overline{\mathcal O}_N\) is a hypersurface (necessarily singular since \(\mathrm{Ann}(N)\neq 0\)), then \(\overline{\mathcal O}_N\) is a normal variety. The proof uses a result by Serre: that \(\overline{\mathcal O}_N\) is normal if and only if the singular locus is a closed subvariety of \(\overline{\mathcal O}_N\) of codimension at least 2.