Incompressibility of orthogonal Grassmannians (Q650851)

Let \(p\) be a prime number. The canonical \(p\)-dimension \(\text{cdim}_pX\) of an irreducible smooth projective variety \(X\) defined over a field \(F\) is the minimal dimension of a closed \(F\)-subvariety \(Y\subset X\) having a 0-cycle of \(p\)-coprime degree on \(Y_{F(X)}\) [\textit{N. A. Karpenko}, ``Canonical dimension'', Proceedings of the international congress of mathematicians (ICM 2010), Hyderabad, India, August 19--27, 2010. Vol. II: Invited lectures. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific; New Delhi: Hindustan Book Agency. 146--161 (2011; Zbl 1227.14043)]. The variety \(X\) is said to be \(p\)-incompressible if \(\text{cdim}_pX=\dim X\). Suppose that \(X\) is homogeneous with respect to an action of a semisimple algebraic \(F\)-group \(G\) such that \(G_E\) is of inner type for some finite Galois field extension \(E\supset F\) with \((E:F)=p^m\). It is proven that, for \(d=\text{cdim}_pX\), there exist Chow cycle classes \(\alpha\in\text{CH}^dX_{F(X)}\) and \(\beta\in\text{CH}_dX_F\) such that \(\deg(\beta_{F(X)}\cdot\alpha)\) is coprime to \(p\). The following formula for the canonical dimension is a consequence of this result: \[ \text{cdim}_pX=\min\{d\mid\exists\alpha\in\text{Ch}^dX_{F(X)},\beta\in\text{Ch}_dX_F, \deg(\beta_{F(X)}\cdot\alpha)=1\}, \] where \(\text{Ch}\) is the reduction of the Chow group \(\text{CH}\) modulo \(p\). In particular, for any field extension \(L\supset F\), the base field change \(\text{Ch}_dX_F\to\text{Ch}_dX_L\) is non-zero. The author applies these results to a special case, where \(p=2\), \(G=O^+(q)\), \(q\) being a non-degenerate quadratic form on \(F^n\), \(X=Q_k\subset\text{Gr}_k(F^n)\), the Grassmannian of isotropic \(k\)-subspaces in \(F^n\) with respect to \(q\). The main result of this note is proving a conjecture of Mathews (2008): If the degree of any closed point on \(Q_k\) is divisible by \(2^k\) and the Witt index of \(q\) over \(F(Q_k)\) equals \(k\), then \(Q_k\) is \(2\)-incompressible.