Jet schemes of the closure of nilpotent orbits

Abstract

We study in this paper the jet schemes of the closure of nilpotent orbits in a finite-dimensional complex reductive Lie algebra. For the nilpotent cone, which is the closure of the regular nilpotent orbit, all the jet schemes are irreducible. This was first observed by Eisenbud and Frenkel, and follows from a strong result of Musta\u{t}\c{a} (2001). Using induction and restriction of "little" nilpotent orbits in reductive Lie algebras, we show that for a large number of nilpotent orbits, the jet schemes of their closure are reducible. As a consequence, we obtain certain geometrical properties of these nilpotent orbit closures.