Rationality of quotients by linear actions of affine groups (Q763651)

Let \(G\) be a connected linear algebraic group over the complex number field \(\mathbb{C}\), \(G \rightarrow \mathrm{GL}(V)\) be a morphism where \(V\) is a finite dimensional complex vector space. Suppose that the action of \(G\) on \(V\) is generically free. The central question of this paper is, under what situations the quotient variety \(V /G\) is a rational variety. For an irreducible variety \(X\) over \(C\), it is understood that \(X\) is a rational variety if the function field \(C(X)\) is purely transcendental over \(C\). A variety \(X\) is said to be stably rational of level \(r\), if \(X \times \mathbb{P}^r\) is a rational variety. The rationality problem of \(V /G\) is a famous question in algebraic geometry. It is known that \(V /G\) is stably rational for many classical linear algebraic groups \(G\) (see [\textit{F. A. Bogomolov}, Mat. Sb., N. Ser. 130(172), No.1 (5), 3--17 (1986; Zbl 0615.14031)] together with [\textit{F. A. Bogomolov} and \textit{P. I. Katsylo}, Math. USSR, Sb. 54, 571--576 (1986); translation from Mat. Sb., Nov. Ser. 126(168), No. 4, 584--589 (1985; Zbl 0591.14040)]). However, it is not easy if we attempt to proving rationality assuming stable rationality (i.e. Zariski cancellation); the reader may consult Remark 5.4 of this paper under review. The main result of this paper is the following theorem. Theorem. Let \(G = \mathbb{C}^n \cdot \mathrm{SL}_n (\mathbb{C})\) (the semi-direct product) be the special affine group. Then there is a constant \(k = k(n)\) depending on \(n\) such that \(V /G\) is rational for any indecomposable representation \(G \rightarrow GL(V )\) satisfying that (i) \(\dim V \geq k\), and (ii) the action of \(G\) on \(V\) is generically free (Theorem 6.1). In particular, if \(G = \mathbb{C}^n \cdot \mathrm{SL}_n (\mathbb{C})\) and \(G \rightarrow \mathrm{GL}(V )\) is any generically free representation, then \(V /G\) is stably rational. By the representation theory of \(G = \mathbb{C}^n \cdot \mathrm{SL}_n (\mathbb{C})\) see [\textit{W. Specht}, Math. Z. 43, 120--160 (1937; JFM 63.0080.02)], if \(V\) is a representation of \(G\), then there exists a filtration \(0 \subset V_0 \subset V_1 \subset \cdots V_{l-1} \subset V_l = V\) such that \(V_0\) is the maximal completely reducible subrepresentation of \(V , V_1 /V_0\) is the maximal completely reducible subrepresentation of \(V /V_0\), and so on. The proof of the main result goes as follows. First prove the result for the case \(l = 1\) (Theorem 5.3), which relies on some results about the Severi-Brauer varieties (Proposition 4.4). With the aid of a technical lemma (Lemma 6.2), the general case can be solved by using Theorem 5.3 and the generic freeness proved in Corollary 5.8. The authors remark that the method for the special affine group in this paper might be applied to many affine extensions of other semi-simple groups (page 1521--1522).