A Dolbeault-Hilbert complex for a variety with isolated singular points
John Lott

TL;DR
This paper develops a Dolbeault-Hilbert complex for complex spaces with isolated singularities, linking analytic and algebraic cohomology theories and connecting to Baum-Fulton-MacPherson's K-homology class.
Contribution
It introduces a Dolbeault-type Hilbert complex for singular complex spaces and establishes its cohomology's isomorphism with the structure sheaf's cohomology.
Findings
Constructed a Dolbeault-Hilbert complex for singular spaces
Proved the cohomology is isomorphic to the structure sheaf's cohomology
Connected the complex's K-homology class to Baum-Fulton-MacPherson's class
Abstract
Given a compact Hermitian complex space with isolated singular points, we construct a Dolbeault-type Hilbert complex whose cohomology is isomorphic to the cohomology of the structure sheaf. We show that the corresponding K-homology class coincides with the one constructed by Baum-Fulton-MacPherson.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
A Dolbeault-Hilbert complex for a variety with
isolated singular points
John Lott
Department of Mathematics
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-3840
USA
(Date: July 11, 2019)
Abstract.
Given a compact Hermitian complex space with isolated singular points, we construct a Dolbeault-type Hilbert complex whose cohomology is isomorphic to the cohomology of the structure sheaf. We show that the corresponding K-homology class coincides with the one constructed by Baum-Fulton-MacPherson.
Key words and phrases:
Dolbeault,singular,variety,Riemann-Roch
2010 Mathematics Subject Classification:
19K33,19L10,32W05,58J10
Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-1810700
1. Introduction
The program of doing index theory, or more generally elliptic theory, on singular varieties goes back at least to Singer’s paper [26, §4]. This program takes various directions, for example the relation between -cohomology and intersection homology. In this paper we consider a somewhat different direction, which is related to the arithmetic genus. This is motivated by work of Baum-Fulton-MacPherson [7, 8].
Let be a projective complex algebraic variety and let be a coherent sheaf on . In [8], the authors associated to an element of the topological K-homology of X. This class enters into their Riemann-Roch theorem for singular varieties. In particular, under the map , the image is expressed in terms of sheaf cohomology by .
In view of the isomorphism between topological K-homology and analytic K-homology [6, 9], the class can be represented by an “abstract elliptic operator” in the sense of Atiyah [3]. This raised the question of how to find an explicit cycle in analytic K-homology, even if is singular, that represents . The most basic case is when is the structure sheaf . If is smooth then the operator representing is . Hence we are looking for the right analog of this operator when may be singular.
A second related question is to find a Hilbert complex, in the sense of [11], whose cohomology is isomorphic to . We want the complex to be intrinsic to . Also, if is smooth then we want to recover the -complex on -forms.
In this paper, we answer these questions when has isolated singular points. To see the nature of the problem, suppose that is a complex curve, whose normalization has genus . In this case, the Riemann-Roch theorem says
[TABLE]
where is a certain positive integer attached to the singular point [16, p. 298]. To find the appropriate Hilbert complex, it is natural to start with the Dolbeault complex of smooth compactly supported forms on and look for a closed operator extension, where is endowed with the induced Riemannian metric from its projective embedding. For the minimal closure , one finds . Taking a different closure can only make the index go up [12], whereas in view of (1.1) we want the index to go down. (Considering complete Riemannian metrics on does not help.) However, on the level of indices, we can get the right answer by enhancing the codomain by .
Now let be a compact Hermitian complex space of pure dimension . For technical reasons, we assume that the singular set consists of isolated singularities. (In the bulk of the paper we allow coupling to a holomorphic vector bundle, but in this introduction we only discuss the case when the vector bundle is trivial.) Let be the minimal closed extension of the -operator on . Its domain can be localized to a complex of sheaves . Let denote the cohomology, a sum of skyscraper sheaves on if . We write for , which is the sheaf of germs of weakly holomorphic functions on , the latter being in the sense of [27, Section 4.3]. Then is also a sum of skyscraper sheaves on . Its vector space of global sections will be written as . Both and can be computed using a resolution of [25, Corollary 1.2].
Define vector spaces by
[TABLE]
To define a differential on , let be the Laplacian associated to . Let be orthogonal projection onto the kernel of . As the elements of are -closed, for each there is a well-defined map to the stalk of at . For , putting these together for all , and precomposing with , gives a linear map . For , we similarly define . Define a differential by
[TABLE]
Theorem 1.4**.**
The cohomology of is isomorphic to .
Theorem 1.4 can be seen as an extension of [25, Corollary 1.3] by Ruppenthal, which implies the result when is normal and has rational singularities. To prove Theorem 1.4, we construct a certain resolution of by fine sheaves. The cohomology of the complex of global sections is then isomorphic to . The complex is not quite the same as but we show that they are cochain-equivalent, from which the theorem follows.
The spectral triple defines an element of the analytic K-homology of .
Theorem 1.5**.**
If is a projective algebraic variety with isolated singularities then in .
There has been interesting earlier work on the questions addressed in this paper. In [1], Ancona and Gaveau gave a resolution of the structure sheaf of a normal complex space , assuming that the singular locus is smooth, in terms of differential forms on a resolution of . The construction depended on the choice of resolution. In [14], Fox and Haskell discussed using a perturbed Dolbeault operator on an ambient manifold to represent the K-homology class of the structure sheaf. In [2], Andersson and Samuelsson gave a resolution of the structure sheaf by certain currents on , that are smooth on . After this paper was written, Bei and Piazza posted [10], which also has a proof of Proposition 5.1.
The structure of the paper is the following. In Section 2, given a holomorphic vector bundle on , we recall the definition of the minimal closure and show that gives an element of the analytic K-homology group , in the unbounded formalism for the Kasparov KK-group . In Section 3 we construct a resolution of the sheaf by fine sheaves. Their global sections give a Hilbert complex. In Section 4 we deform this to the complex . Section 5 has the proof of Theorem 1.5. More detailed descriptions appear at the beginning of the sections.
I thank Paul Baum and Peter Haskell for discussions. I especially thank Peter for pointing out the relevance of [17]. I also thank the referee for helpful comments.
2. Minimal closure and compact resolvent
In this section we consider a holomorphic vector bundle on a compact complex space with isolated singularities. We define the minimal closure . We show that the spectral triple gives a well-defined element of the analytic -homology group , in the unbounded formalism. The main issue is to show that has a compact resolvent. When is trivial, this was shown in [22].
Let be a reduced compact complex space of pure dimension . For each , there is a neighborhood of with an embedding of into some domain , as the zero set of a finite number of holomorphic functions on .
Let be the analytic structure sheaf of . Let be the set of singular points of and put .
We equip with a Hermitian metric on that satisfies the following property: For each , there are and as above, along with a smooth Hermitian metric on , so that g\Big{|}_{X_{reg}\cap U}=G\Big{|}_{X_{reg}\cap U}.
Let be a finite dimensional holomorphic vector bundle on or, equivalently, a locally free sheaf of -modules. For each , there are and as above so that V\Big{|}_{U} is the restriction of a trivial holomorphic bundle on . Let be a Hermitian inner product on V\Big{|}_{X_{reg}} that satisfies the following property: For each , there are such and so that h\Big{|}_{X_{reg}\cap U} is the restriction of a smooth Hermitian metric on .
Let be the minimal closed extension of the -operator on . That is, the domain of is the set of so that there are a sequence of compactly supported smooth forms on and some such that in , and in . We then put , which is uniquely defined.
Hereafter we assume that is finite.
Proposition 2.1**.**
The spectral triple gives a well-defined element of the analytic -homology group .
Proof.
Put , with dense domain . Put , the case when is the trivial complex line bundle. Put
[TABLE]
Using the local trivializations of , it follows that
[TABLE]
To satisfy the definitions of unbounded analytic -homology [5, 13, 20], we first need to show that is dense in .
Given and , we can construct so that
- •
For each , there is a neighborhood of on which is constant, with .
- •
is smooth on .
- •
.
Then and . It follows that is dense in .
To prove the proposition, it now suffices to prove the following lemma.
Lemma 2.4**.**
* is compact*
Proof.
If is trivial then the lemma is true [22]. We will use a parametrix construction to prove it for general .
We first prove the lemma for a special inner product on . Write . For each , let be a neighborhood of on which is trivialized as above, with for . Choose open sets with smooth boundary , with , and . Let be identically one on , with support in , and smooth on . Let be identically one on , with support in , and smooth on , so that is one on the support of .
Define an inner product on by first taking it to be a trivial inner product on each , in terms of our given trivializations, and then extending it smoothly to the rest of . Let be the extension of the trivialization to a product bundle on on , as a smooth vector bundle with trivial inner product. Let be the corresponding operator. As is compact [22], the same is true for . Let be the operator on , with Atiyah-Patodi-Singer boundary conditions [4]. (The paper [4] assumes a product structure near the boundary, but this is not necessary.) Then is compact. Put , with support in . Pick with support in , and smooth on , such that is one on the support of .
For , put
[TABLE]
Then is compact and
[TABLE]
so
[TABLE]
As , and are bounded, it follows that is compact.
As (for the inner product ) is compact, the spectral theorem for compact operators and the functional calculus imply that is compact. Writing , there is then a Hodge decomposition
[TABLE]
where the right-hand side is a sum of orthogonal closed subspaces. In particular,
- (1)
is closed, 2. (2)
is finite dimensional and 3. (3)
The map is invertible and the inverse is compact, i.e. sends bounded sets to precompact sets.
(The inverse map is , where is the Green’s operator for .) As the -inner products on coming from and are relatively bounded, the above three properties also hold for . It follows that there is a Hodge decomposition relative to the inner product , and is compact. Hence is compact. ∎
This proves the proposition. ∎
3. Resolution
In this section we construct a certain resolution of the sheaf of holomorphic sections of a holomorphic vector bundle on . To begin, we define a sheaf on , following [25, Section 2.1].
Given an open set and a compact subset , we write for and for .
Let be a finite dimensional holomorphic vector bundle on equipped with a Hermitian metric, in the sense of Section 2. There is a sheaf on whose sections over an open set are the locally square integrable -valued forms of degree on , i.e. they are square integrable on for any compact set . Convergence will mean -convergence on each such . By definition, the sections of over are the elements so that there are
- •
A sequence and
- •
Some
such that for any compact , we have
- •
in and
- •
in .
Then we put .
This gives a complex of fine sheaves
[TABLE]
The cohomology of the complex is the sheaf . For , it is a direct sum of skyscraper sheaves, with support in . We write for , i.e. the kernel of acting on . Then is also a direct sum of skyscraper sheaves with support in .
Although we will not need it here, there is a description of these skyscraper sheaves in terms of a resolution of . Suppose that is a resolution. From [25, Corollary 1.2], if then we can identify the stalk with . In particular, we can identify with or, more intrinsically, with the sheaf of weakly holomorphic sections of , i.e. bounded holomorphic sections of V\Big{|}_{X_{reg}}.
There is a quotient morphism of sheaves: . As is an injective sheaf for , we can extend to a morphism . More specifically, if is a singular point then the stalk is a finite dimensional complex vector space, so we are extending the quotient map from the germs of -closed -valued forms at , to the germs of forms in the domain of .
Considering to be a complex of sheaves with zero differential, is a morphism of complexes that is an isomorphism on cohomology in degree by construction. Let be the mapping cone of , with and differential . It has vanishing cohomology in degree . Define a complex of sheaves by
[TABLE]
where the differential in degree is , the differential in degree is , and the differential in degrees is . Then is a resolution of by fine sheaves.
There is a short exact sequence of sheaves
[TABLE]
We can think of as a resolution of itself, when concentrated in degree zero. Together with the resolution of from (3.2), we can construct a resolution of as follows. As is a finite sum of skyscraper sheaves, we can extend the quotient map to a morphism . Define a complex of sheaves by
[TABLE]
where the differential in degree is , the differential in degree sends to , and the differential in degrees is . Then is a resolution of by fine sheaves; c.f. [19, Pf. of Proposition I.6.10].
Taking global sections of gives a cochain complex :
[TABLE]
For the last term, we use the fact that in terms of a resolution , we have .
Proposition 3.6**.**
The cohomology of is isomorphic to .
Proof.
This holds because is a resolution of by fine sheaves. ∎
Put arbitrary inner products on the finite dimensional vector spaces and .
4. Hilbert complex
The differential in the Hilbert complex of the previous section involved somewhat arbitrary choices of and . In this section we replace by a more canonical Hilbert complex .
For brevity of notation, we put
[TABLE]
Then the complex has entries Combining and , we have constructed a linear map so that the differential of is given by
[TABLE]
Note that .
Let be orthogonal projection onto . Define a new differential on by
[TABLE]
Call the resulting cochain complex .
As in (2.8), there is a Hodge decomposition
[TABLE]
Here the terms on the right-hand side of (4.4) are the intersections of with the corresponding terms in (2.8). In particular, and are the same, while the elements of now lie in an -space. Put
[TABLE]
an isomorphism.
Define a linear map by saying that if
[TABLE]
then
[TABLE]
Its inverse is given by
[TABLE]
Proposition 4.9**.**
The linear maps and are chain maps between and , i.e. and .
Proof.
We will check that ; the proof that is similar.
Given as in (4.6), we have
[TABLE]
This proves the proposition. ∎
Theorem 4.11**.**
The cohomology of is isomorphic to .
Proof.
This follows from Propositions 3.6 and 4.9. ∎
We can now reprove a result from [15, Example 18.3.3 on p. 362].
Proposition 4.12**.**
In terms of a resolution , we have
[TABLE]
Proof.
Let denote the complex when the vector bundle is the trivial bundle. From Theorem 4.11, the left-hand side of (4.13) is the index of . We can deform the chain complex to make the differential equal to without changing the index. The new index is
[TABLE]
From [23], we have , so
[TABLE]
From [25, Corollary 1.2], we have and . The proposition follows. ∎
Remark 4.16*.*
We can write , where we are integrating a top-degree form on . It is not so clear what the relevant theory of characteristic classes on should be, for which this would be an example. We have in mind a Chern-Weil theory on with control on how the forms behave near . We note that there is a rational homology class on , where is the Poincaré dual of , and if is connected then can be identified with the degree-zero component of .
5. K-homology class
In this section we prove Theorem 1.5. We first show that if is a resolution of singularities, with a simple normal crossing divisor, then the K-homology class , from Proposition 2.1 with trivial, equals the pushforward . We then prove Theorem 1.5.
Proposition 5.1**.**
Let be a resolution of singularities, with being a simple normal crossing divisor. Then .
Proof.
The method of proof comes from [17]. Consider the following part of the K-homology exact sequence for the pair :
[TABLE]
Lemma 5.3**.**
We have in .
Proof.
Put . Since it has simple normal crossings, there will be a small regular neighborhood of whose closure is homotopy equivalent to . We can also assume that is homotopy equivalent to [21, Theorem 2.10]. As is independent of the choice of Hermitian metric on , we can choose a Hermitian metric on so that restricts to an isometry from to .
Consider the commutative diagram
[TABLE]
Starting with and going along the top row, its image in is the restriction of the analytic K-homology class, i.e. one only acts by functions that vanish on . The right vertical arrow of the diagram is an isomorphism coming from the bijection between and . By the commutativity of the diagram, we now know what is as an element of . However, this is isomorphic to the restriction of to an element of (since gives an isometry between and ). The latter restriction is the same as . This proves the lemma. ∎
To continue with the proof of Proposition 5.1, we know now that lies in the kernel of , and so lies in the image of . For the purpose of the proof, we can assume that is connected. Let be an arbitrary fixed embedding and let be the induced homomorphism. The connectedness of implies that . Let be the unique point map. Consider and the induced homomorphisms . Then the map restricts to an isomorphism between and . Hence to prove the proposition, it suffices to show that in .
Now is the index of , i.e. , while is the index of , i.e. . From [23], these are equal term-by-term. This proves the proposition. ∎
We now prove Theorem 1.5. Suppose that is a connected projective algebraic variety. In terms of the resolution , it was pointed out in [7, p. 104] that there is an identity in :
[TABLE]
Here the ’s are certain integers and the ’s are irreducible subvarieties of the singular locus of . In our case of isolated singularities, the ’s are just the points in . As , Proposition 5.1 implies that
[TABLE]
Let denote the complex when the vector bundle is the trivial bundle. Let be the K-homology class coming from the operator . We can deform the chain complex to make the differential equal to without changing the K-homology class arising from the complex. Then (5.6) implies that and have the same image in ; c.f. the proof of Lemma 5.3. Let be the unique point map. As in the proof of Proposition 5.1, to conclude that in , it now suffices to show that in . Now is the index of which, from Theorem 4.11, equals the arithmetic genus . On the other hand, from [8, Section 3], we also have . This proves the theorem.
Remark 5.7*.*
We mention some of the issues involved in extending the present paper to nonisolated singularities. First, it seems to be open whether has compact resolvient, so the unbounded -formalism may not be applicable. However, it is known that the unreduced cohomology of the -complex is finite dimensional, being isomorphic to the cohomology of a resolution [23]. Hence the -complex is Fredholm and one could use the bounded -description of K-homology, although it would be more cumbersome.
We expect that Proposition 5.1 still holds if has nonisolated singularities. It is known that taking resolutions , the pushforward is independent of the choice of resolution [18].
One could ask for an extension of Theorem 4.11 to the case of nonisolated singularities. As an indication, one would expect that taking products of complex spaces would lead to tensor products of the cochain complexes. In particular, suppose that is a smooth Hermitian manifold and has isolated singular points. Then the cochain complex for would have contributions from differential forms along the singular locus.
In a related vein, in principle one can apply (5.5) inductively to get an expression for .
The reference list from the paper itself. Each links out to its DOI / PubMed record.
- 1[1] V. Ancona and B. Gaveau, “Differential forms and resolution on certain analytic spaces III. Spectral resolution”, Ann. Mat. Pura Appl. 166, p. 175-2002 (1994)
- 2[2] M. Andersson and H. Samuelsson, “A Dolbeault-Grothendieck lemma on complex spaces via Koppelman formulas”, Inv. Math. 190, p. 261-297 (2012)
- 3[3] M. Atiyah, “Global theory of elliptic operators”, in Proc. Internat. Conf. on Functional Analysis and Related Topics , Univ. of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, p. 21-30 (1970)
- 4[4] M. Atiyah, V. Patodi and I. Singer, “Spectral asymmetry and Riemannian geometry”, Bull. London Math. Soc. 5, p. 229-234 (1973)
- 5[5] S. Baaj and P. Julg, “Théorie bivariante de Kasparov et opérateurs non bornés dans les C ∗ superscript 𝐶 C^{*} -modules hilbertiens”, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Sér. I Math. 296, no. 21, p. 875-878 (1983)
- 6[6] P. Baum and R. Douglas, “K-homology and index theory”, in Operator algebras and applications , ed. R. Kadison, Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 38, Amer. Math. Society, Providence, p. 117-173 (1982)
- 7[7] P. Baum, W. Fulton and R. Mac Pherson, “Riemann-Roch for singular varieties”, Publ. Math. IHES 45, p. 101-145 (1975)
- 8[8] P. Baum, W. Fulton and R. Mac Pherson, “Riemann-Roch and topological K-theory for singular varieties”, Acta Math. 143, p. 155-192 (1979)
