TOPOLOGY OF THE REPRESENTATION VARIETIES WITH BOREL MOLD FOR UNSTABLE CASES

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper we show that, in the stable case, when m≥2n−1, the cohomology ring H*(Repn(m)B) of the representation variety with Borel mold Repn(m)B and $H^{\ast }(F_{n}(\mathbb {C}^m)) \otimes H^{\ast }(\mathrm {Flag}(\mathbb { C}^n)) \otimes \Lambda (s_{1}, \ldots , s_{n-1})$ are isomorphic as algebras. Here the degree of si is 2m−3 when 1≤i<n. In the unstable cases, when m≤2n−2, we also calculate the cohomology group H*(Repn(m)B) when n=3,4 . In the most exotic case, when m=2 , Rep n (2)B is homotopy equivalent to Fn (ℂ2)×PGL n (ℂ) , where Fn (ℂ2) is the configuration space of n distinct points in ℂ2. We regard Rep n (2)B as a scheme over ℤ, and show that the Picard group Pic (Rep n (2)B) of Rep n (2)B is isomorphic to ℤ/nℤ. We give an explicit generator of the Picard group.