Character varieties of free groups are Gorenstein but not always factorial (Q286556)

Let \(F_g\) be a free group of rank \(g\geq 1\) and let \(G\) be a complex connected reductive algebraic group. Let \(\mathcal{X}(F_g, G)\) denote the variety of \(G\)-valued characters on \(F_g\). The authors show that \(\mathcal{X}(F_g, G)\) is always a Gorenstein variety. It is also shown that \(\mathcal{X}(F_g, G)\) is factorial if the commutator subgroup \(DG=[G,G]\) is simply connected. The authors provide an example that the character variety \(\mathcal{X}(F_g, G)\) need not even to be locally factorial if \(DG\) is not simply connected. The paper under review consists of five sections. Section~1 is an introduction, where the main result of the paper, Theorem~1.1, is formulated. The results about factoriality are proved (in arbitrary characteristic) in Section~2. In Section~3 the authors collect some important results on characterization of Gorenstein graded algebras. It is also pointed out here that the Gorenstein property is inherited by the fibres of flat deformations of Gorenstein graded algebras. In Section~4, for a maximal unipotent subgroup \(U\) in \(G\), the Gorenstein property is verified for the configuration space \(P_3(G)\) of \(3\) points in the homogeneous variety \(G/U\). This allows to prove the main result in Section~5 by constructing a flat degeneration of \(\mathcal{X}(F_g, G)\) to a normal affine toric variety whose Gorenstein property follows from the results of Section~4.