Degree of the variety of pairs of nilpotent commuting matrices (Q487078)

The affine variety formed by pairs of commuting matrices \((A, B)\) of order \(n\) is defined in \[ \mathbb C^{2n^2} \cong \Hom(\mathbb C^n, \mathbb C^n) \oplus \Hom(\mathbb C^n, \mathbb C^n) \] by the system of \(n^2\) polynomial equations \[ \sum A_{ik} B_{kj} = \sum B_{ik} A_{kj} . \] It is known to be irreducible, of dimension \(n^2 +n\). Since these equations are homogeneous, one may ask about the degree of the corresponding projective variety \(\mathbf W_n\) in \(\mathbb P^{2n^2-1}\). The answer for general \(n\) was obtained in [\textit{A. Knutson} and \textit{P. Zinn-Justin}, Adv. Math. 214, No. 1, 40--77 (2007; Zbl 1193.14068)]. Let \[ \mathbb V_n \subset \mathbf W_n \subset \mathbb P^{2n^2-1} \] be projective variety formed by pairs of nilpotent commuting matrices. It is also known to be irreducible of dimension \(n^2 - 2\). In this paper the authors compute the degree of \(\mathbb V_n\) for order \(n = 2, 3\) and \(4\) using blow ups and equivariant intersections.