Odd symplectic flag manifolds

DOI10.1007/S00031-006-0053-0MaRDI QIDQ2463785zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 6 December 2007

Published in Transformation Groups (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0604323

Grassmannians, Schubert varieties, flag manifolds (14M15) Homogeneous spaces and generalizations (14M17)

Abstract: We define the odd symplectic grassmannians and flag manifolds, which are smooth projective varieties equipped with an action of the odd symplectic group and generalizing the usual symplectic grassmannians and flag manifolds. Contrary to the latter, which are the flag manifolds of the symplectic group, the varieties we introduce are not homogeneous. We argue nevertheless that in many respects the odd symplectic grassmannians and flag manifolds behave like homogeneous varieties; in support of this claim, we compute the automorphism group of the odd symplectic grassmannians, and we prove a Borel-Weil type theorem for the odd symplectic group.

Review text

This paper studies the odd symplectic group introduced by \textit{R. A.~Proctor} [Invent. Math. 92, 307--332 (1998; Zbl 0621.22009)] from a geometric point of view. This group \(\text{Sp}_{2n+1}\) (where \(n\) is a positive integer) is defined as the of group linear transformations of a complex vector space \(E\) of dimension \(2n+1\) that preserve a skew form \(\omega \in \bigwedge^2 E^*\) of rank \(2n\). It is a \textit{non}-reductive connected linear algebraic group. Mihai introduces odd symplectic [generalized] flag varieties as the varieties of flags of isotropic subspaces of \((E, \omega)\): \[ \mathbb{F}_{\omega}(d_1,\dots,d_r,E) := \{(V_{d_1} \subset \cdots \subset V_{d_r} \subset E)\mid \dim V_{d_i}= d_i, V_{d_i} \text{ isotropic }\forall 1\leq i \leq r\} \] where \(1\leq d_1 < \cdots < d_r \leq n+1\) are integers. He shows that they are smooth projective varieties which are quasi-homogeneous (i.e. have finitely many orbits) under the natural action by \( \text{Sp}_{2n+1}\). He does not consider the homogeneous spaces \(\text{Sp}_{2n+1}/P\) (where \(P\) is a parabolic subgroup) because they are isomorphic to the flag manifolds of the symplectic group \(\text{Sp}_{2n}\) and ``therefore do not constitute representative examples for the odd symplectic sytuation. The author then studies the odd symplectic Grassmannian \(G_{\omega}(k,E) := \mathbb{F}_{\omega}(k,E)\) and the odd symplectic flag variety \({F}_{\omega}(E) := {F}_{\omega}(1,\dots,n+1,E)\) in more detail. In the first main result of the paper he determines the automorphism group of the variety \(G_{\omega}(k,E)\). Combining this with the corresponding result for the (even) symplectic result he has thus obtained the following theorem: for integers \(N\) and \(k\) such that \(2 \leq k \leq [N/2]\), the automorphism group of the variety \(G_{\omega}(k, \mathbb{C}^N)\) is \(\text{Sp}_{N}/\{\pm 1\}\). The second main result is an analogue of the Borel--Weil theorem. Because the odd symplectic group is not reductive this requires some care: which representations should replace the simple modules in the Borel-Weil theorem? The author considers the \(\text{Sp}_{2n+1}\)-modules introduced by Proctor [loc. cit.] which ``are defined by carrying over to the odd symplectic setting Weyl's construction of the simple \(\text{Sp}_{2n}\)-modules. Here too he obtains a formulation for all integers \(N\) which reduces to the usual Borel--Weil theorem when \(N\) is even. As the author says, these two results ``allow us to picture the symplectic and odd symplectic flag manifolds as a `series'.

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