Unitary Grassmannians of division algebras (Q265480)

We say a variety over a field \(F\) is \(p\)-incompressible (resp. incompressible), if its canonical \(p\)-dimension (resp. canonical dimension), defined as in [\textit{A. Merkurjev}, ``Essential dimension: a survey'', (2012), \url{http://www.math.ucla.edu/~merkurev/papers/survey-update3.pdf}], is equal to its usual dimension. A smooth projective variety \(X\) is incompressible if every rational map \(X \to X\) is dominant, and \(p\)-incompressible if every correspondence \(X \rightsquigarrow X\) of degree prime to \(p\) is dominant. An important example of \(p\)-incompressible varieties is given in earlier work of the author [\textit{N. A. Karpenko}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 677, 179--198 (2013; Zbl 1267.14009)] where he considered the case of generalized Severi-Brauer varieties. Let \(p\) be a prime integer and let \(D\) be a central division \(F\)-algebra of degree \(p^n\). For any integer \(i\), the generalized Severi-Brauer variety \(X(i;D)\) is the \(F\)-variety of right ideals in \(D\) of reduced dimension \(i\). Here the reduced dimension of a right ideal \(I\) in \(D\) is defined as \(\dim_F(I)/\sqrt{\dim_F D}\).Then the varieties \(X(1; D)\) (the usual Severi-Brauer variety of \(D\)) and \(X(p^m;D)\), \(1 \leq m \leq n-1\), are \(p\)-incompressible. In the present article, the author studies incompressibility of varieties of isotropic right ideals in division algebras \(D\) with involutions. An involution on a central simple algebra \(A\) is called orthogonal (resp. symplectic, resp. unitary) if it is adjoint to a symmetric (resp. skew-symmetric, resp. hermitian) form after scalar extension to a splitting field of \(A\). The article extends the results of [\textit{N. A. Karpenko}, J. Ramanujan Math. Soc. 28, No. 2, 213--22 (2013; Zbl 1312.14108)] on orthogonal and symplectic involutions to the unitary case. The main theorem is as follows. Let \(F\) be a field, \(K/F\) a quadratic extension, \(n\) an integer \(\geq 1\), and \(D\) a central division \(K\)-algebra of degree \(2^n\) endowed with a \(K/F\)-unitary involution \(\sigma\). For any \(i\) let \(X_i\) be the \(F\)-variety of isotropic (with respect to \(\sigma\)) right ideals in \(D\) of reduced dimension \(i\). It is a smooth and projective variety which is non-empty if and only if \(0 \leq i \leq 2^{n-1}\). The main theorem of the article is that for any \(r = 0,1,\ldots,n-1\) the variety \(X_{2^r}\) is \(2\)-incompressible. As in his earlier work the proof makes use of the notion of upper motives introduced by the author in [\textit{N. A. Karpenko}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 677, 179--198 (2013; Zbl 1267.14009)].