On the geometry of quadrics and their degenerations (Q584340)

The space \(X^ n\) of complete quadrics is an appropriate compactification of the space \(X^ n_ 0\) of nonsingular quadrics in projective space \({\mathbb{P}}^{n-1}\) specially suited for the enumerative geometry of quadrics. One of the main results of the paper is the isomorphism \[ H^ k(X^ n,{\mathbb{Q}})\simeq \oplus^{[n/2]}_{s=1}\oplus_{a+b=k-4s}[H^ a(F_ s,{\mathbb{Q}})] \otimes H^ b(\bar T_ s,{\mathbb{Q}})]^{S_ s\times S_{n-2s}}, \] which describes the cohomology groups of \(X^ n\) in terms of the cohomology of easier spaces \(F_ s\) (flag spaces) and \(\bar T_ s\) (toric spaces) and in terms of certain actions of the symmetric groups \(S_ s\) and \(S_{n-2s}\) on these. Even more important for enumerative geometry is a further result, which gives a fairly concrete description of the cohomology ring structure. This is achieved by an embedding of the cohomology ring into a ring \(R_{[n/2]}\), which is explicitly defined by a set of generators and relations.