Geometric collections and Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity

Abstract

AbstractThe paper begins by overviewing the basic facts on geometric exceptional collections. Then we derive, for any coherent sheaf $\cF$ on a smooth projective variety with a geometric collection, two spectral sequences: the first one abuts to $\cF$ and the second one to its cohomology. The main goal of the paper is to generalize Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity for coherent sheaves on projective spaces to coherent sheaves on smooth projective varieties X with a geometric collection σ. We define the notion of regularity of a coherent sheaf $\cF$ on X with respect to σ. We show that the basic formal properties of the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity of coherent sheaves over projective spaces continue to hold in this new setting and we show that in case of coherent sheaves on $\PP^n$ and for a suitable geometric collection of coherent sheaves on $\PP^n$ both notions of regularity coincide. Finally, we carefully study the regularity of coherent sheaves on a smooth quadric hypersurface $Q_n \subset \PP^{n+1}$ (n odd) with respect to a suitable geometric collection and we compare it with the Castelnuovo–Mumford regularity of their extension by zero in $\PP^{n+1}$.