Let $\Omega _n$ be the ring of polynomial-valued holomorphic differential forms on complex n-space, referred to in physics as the superspace ring of rank n. The symmetric group ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$ acts diagonally on $\Omega _n$ by permuting commuting and anticommuting generators simultaneously. We let $SI_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ be the ideal generated by ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$-invariants with vanishing constant term and study the quotient $SR_n = \Omega _n / SI_n$ of superspace by this ideal. We calculate the doubly-graded Hilbert series of $SR_n$ and prove an ‘operator theorem’, which characterizes the harmonic space $SH_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ attached to $SR_n$ in terms of the Vandermonde determinant and certain differential operators. Our methods employ commutative algebra results that were used in the study of Hessenberg varieties. Our results prove conjectures of N. Bergeron, Colmenarejo, Li, Machacek, Sulzgruber, Swanson, Wallach and Zabrocki.

We classify the automorphic Lie algebras of equivariant maps from a complex torus to $\mathfrak{sl}_2(\mathbb{C})$. For each case, we compute a basis in a normal form. The automorphic Lie algebras correspond precisely to two disjoint families of Lie algebras parametrised by the modular curve of $\mathrm{PSL}_2({\mathbb{Z}})$, apart from four cases, which are all isomorphic to Onsager’s algebra.

In this paper, we express the reduction types of Picard curves in terms of tropical invariants associated with binary quintics. We also give a general framework for tropical invariants associated with group actions on arbitrary varieties. The problem of finding tropical invariants for binary forms fits in this general framework by mapping the space of binary forms to symmetrized versions of the Deligne–Mumford compactification $\overline{M}_{0,n}$.

Consider a reductive linear algebraic group G acting linearly on a polynomial ring S over an infinite field; key examples are the general linear group, the symplectic group, the orthogonal group, and the special linear group, with the classical representations as in Weyl’s book: For the general linear group, consider a direct sum of copies of the standard representation and copies of the dual; in the other cases, take copies of the standard representation. The invariant rings in the respective cases are determinantal rings, rings defined by Pfaffians of alternating matrices, symmetric determinantal rings and the Plücker coordinate rings of Grassmannians; these are the classical invariant rings of the title, with $S^G\subseteq S$ being the natural embedding.

Over a field of characteristic zero, a reductive group is linearly reductive, and it follows that the invariant ring $S^G$ is a pure subring of S, equivalently, $S^G$ is a direct summand of S as an $S^G$-module. Over fields of positive characteristic, reductive groups are typically no longer linearly reductive. We determine, in the positive characteristic case, precisely when the inclusion $S^G\subseteq S$ is pure. It turns out that if $S^G\subseteq S$ is pure, then either the invariant ring $S^G$ is regular or the group G is linearly reductive.

Using Cohen’s classification of symplectic reflection groups, we prove that the parabolic subgroups, that is, stabilizer subgroups, of a finite symplectic reflection group, are themselves symplectic reflection groups. This is the symplectic analog of Steinberg’s Theorem for complex reflection groups.

Using computational results required in the proof, we show the nonexistence of symplectic resolutions for symplectic quotient singularities corresponding to three exceptional symplectic reflection groups, thus reducing further the number of cases for which the existence question remains open.

Another immediate consequence of our result is that the singular locus of the symplectic quotient singularity associated to a symplectic reflection group is pure of codimension two.

In this paper, we study sample size thresholds for maximum likelihood estimation for tensor normal models. Given the model parameters and the number of samples, we determine whether, almost surely, (1) the likelihood function is bounded from above, (2) maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) exist, and (3) MLEs exist uniquely. We obtain a complete answer for both real and complex models. One consequence of our results is that almost sure boundedness of the log-likelihood function guarantees almost sure existence of an MLE. Our techniques are based on invariant theory and castling transforms.

We show that the Specht ideal of a two-rowed partition is perfect over an arbitrary field, provided that the characteristic is either zero or bounded below by the size of the second row of the partition, and we show this lower bound is tight. We also establish perfection and other properties of certain variants of Specht ideals, and find a surprising connection to the weak Lefschetz property. Our results, in particular, give a self-contained proof of Cohen–Macaulayness of certain h-equals sets, a result previously obtained by Etingof–Gorsky–Losev over the complex numbers using rational Cherednik algebras.

We exhibit a set of generating relations for the modular invariant ring of a vector and a covector for the two-dimensional general linear group over a finite field.

Let $K$ be a compact Lie group with complexification $G$, and let $V$ be a unitary $K$-module. We consider the real symplectic quotient $M_{0}$ at level zero of the homogeneous quadratic moment map as well as the complex symplectic quotient, defined here as the complexification of $M_{0}$. We show that if $(V,G)$ is $3$-large, a condition that holds generically, then the complex symplectic quotient has symplectic singularities and is graded Gorenstein. This implies in particular that the real symplectic quotient is graded Gorenstein. In case $K$ is a torus or $\operatorname{SU}_{2}$, we show that these results hold without the hypothesis that $(V,G)$ is $3$-large.

We consider the space $X=\bigwedge ^{3}\mathbb{C}^{6}$ of alternating senary 3-tensors, equipped with the natural action of the group $\operatorname{GL}_{6}$ of invertible linear transformations of $\mathbb{C}^{6}$. We describe explicitly the category of $\operatorname{GL}_{6}$-equivariant coherent ${\mathcal{D}}_{X}$-modules as the category of representations of a quiver with relations, which has finite representation type. We give a construction of the six simple equivariant ${\mathcal{D}}_{X}$-modules and give formulas for the characters of their underlying $\operatorname{GL}_{6}$-structures. We describe the (iterated) local cohomology groups with supports given by orbit closures, determining, in particular, the Lyubeznik numbers associated to the orbit closures.

We consider ideals in a polynomial ring that are generated by regular sequences of homogeneous polynomials and are stable under the action of the symmetric group permuting the variables. In previous work, we determined the possible isomorphism types for these ideals. Following up on that work, we now analyze the possible degrees of the elements in such regular sequences. For each case of our classification, we provide some criteria guaranteeing the existence of regular sequences in certain degrees.

In this paper, we will prove that any $\mathbb{A}^{3}$-form over a field $k$ of characteristic zero is trivial provided it has a locally nilpotent derivation satisfying certain properties. We will also show that the result of Kambayashi on the triviality of separable $\mathbb{A}^{2}$-forms over a field $k$ extends to $\mathbb{A}^{2}$-forms over any one-dimensional Noetherian domain containing $\mathbb{Q}$.

This paper is a complement to the work of the second author on modular quotient singularities in odd characteristic. Here, we prove that if V is a three-dimensional vector space over a field of characteristic 2 and G < GL(V) is a finite subgroup generated by pseudoreflections and possessing a two-dimensional invariant subspace W such that the restriction of G to W is isomorphic to the group SL2(𝔽2n), then the quotient V/G is non-singular. This, together with earlier known results on modular quotient singularities, implies first that a theorem of Kemper and Malle on irreducible groups generated by pseudoreflections generalizes to reducible groups in dimension three, and, second, that the classification of three-dimensional isolated singularities that are quotients of a vector space by a linear finite group reduces to Vincent's classification of non-modular isolated quotient singularities.

We construct a norm on the nonzero elements of a Prüfer domain and extend this concept to the set of ideals of a Prüfer domain. These norms are used to study factorization properties Prüfer of domains.

Let $G$ be a reductive group over an algebraically closed subfield $k$ of $\mathbb{C}$ of characteristic zero, $H\subseteq G$ an observable subgroup normalised by a maximal torus of $G$ and $X$ an affine $k$ -variety acted on by  $G$ . Popov and Pommerening conjectured in the late 1970s that the invariant algebra $k[X]^{H}$ is finitely generated. We prove the conjecture for: (1) subgroups of $\operatorname{SL}_{n}(k)$ closed under left (or right) Borel action and for: (2) a class of Borel regular subgroups of classical groups. We give a partial affirmative answer to the conjecture for general regular subgroups of $\operatorname{SL}_{n}(k)$ .

Let $U$ be a unipotent group which is graded in the sense that it has an extension $H$ by the multiplicative group of the complex numbers such that all the weights of the adjoint action on the Lie algebra of $U$ are strictly positive. We study embeddings of $H$ in a general linear group $G$ which possess Grosshans-like properties. More precisely, suppose $H$ acts on a projective variety $X$ and its action extends to an action of $G$ which is linear with respect to an ample line bundle on $X$ . Then, provided that we are willing to twist the linearization of the action of $H$ by a suitable (rational) character of $H$ , we find that the $H$ -invariants form a finitely generated algebra and hence define a projective variety $X/\!/H$ ; moreover, the natural morphism from the semistable locus in $X$ to $X/\!/H$ is surjective, and semistable points in $X$ are identified in $X/\!/H$ if and only if the closures of their $H$ -orbits meet in the semistable locus. A similar result applies when we replace $X$ by its product with the projective line; this gives us a projective completion of a geometric quotient of a $U$ -invariant open subset of $X$ by the action of the unipotent group $U$ .

Conjectures are given for Hilbert series related to polynomial invariants of finite general linear groups: one for invariants mod Frobenius powers of the irrelevant ideal and one for cofixed spaces of polynomials.

If $(G,V)$ is a polar representation with Cartan subspace $\mathfrak{c}$ and Weyl group $W$ , it is shown that there is a natural morphism of Poisson schemes $\mathfrak{c}\oplus \mathfrak{c}^{\ast }/W\rightarrow V\oplus V^{\ast }/\!\!/\!\!/G$ . This morphism is conjectured to be an isomorphism of the underlying reduced varieties if $(G,V)$ is visible. The conjecture is proved for visible stable locally free polar representations and some other examples.

Harm Derksen made a conjecture concerning degree bounds for the syzygies of rings of polynomial invariants in the non-modular case [Degree bounds for syzygies of invariants, Adv. Math. 185 (2004), 207–214]. We provide counterexamples to this conjecture, but also prove a slightly weakened version. We also prove some general results that give degree bounds on the homology of complexes and of $\text{Tor}\,$ groups.

In 1981, Thompson proved that, if $n\geqslant 1$ is any integer and $G$ is any finite subgroup of $\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ , then $G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most $4n^{2}$ . He conjectured that, in fact, there is a universal constant $C$ such that for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$ and any finite subgroup $G<\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ , $G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most $Cn$ . This conjecture would imply that the ${\it\alpha}$ -invariant ${\it\alpha}_{G}(\mathbb{P}^{n-1})$ , as introduced by Tian in 1987, is at most $C$ . We prove Thompson’s conjecture in this paper.