The variety of reductions for a reductive symmetric pair

We define and study the variety of reductions for a reductive symmetric pair (G,theta), which is the natural compactification of the set of the Cartan subspaces of the symmetric pair. These varieties generalize the varieties of reductions for the Severi varieties studied by Iliev and Manivel, which are Fano varieties. We develop a theoretical basis to the study these varieties of reductions, and relate the geometry of these variety to some problems in representation theory. A very useful result is the rigidity of semi-simple elements in deformations of algebraic subalgebras of Lie algebras. We apply this theory to the study of other varieties of reductions in a companion paper, which yields two new Fano varieties.Comment: 23 page

Equivariant Cohomology of Rationally Smooth Group Embeddings

We describe the equivariant cohomology ring of rationally smooth projective embeddings of reductive groups. These embeddings are the projectivizations of reductive monoids. Our main result describes their equivariant cohomology in terms of roots, idempotents, and underlying monoid data. Also, we characterize those embeddings whose equivariant cohomology ring is obtained via restriction to the associated toric variety. Such characterization is given in terms of the closed orbits.Comment: 25 pages. Final version. To appear in Transformation Group

Holomorphic discs and sutured manifolds

In this paper we construct a Floer-homology invariant for a natural and wide class of sutured manifolds that we call balanced. This generalizes the Heegaard Floer hat theory of closed three-manifolds and links. Our invariant is unchanged under product decompositions and is zero for nontaut sutured manifolds. As an application, an invariant of Seifert surfaces is given and is computed in a few interesting cases.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 4 October 200

An Algorithm for Computing the Limit Points of the Quasi-component of a Regular Chain

For a regular chain $R$, we propose an algorithm which computes the (non-trivial) limit points of the quasi-component of $R$, that is, the set $\bar{W(R)} \setminus W(R)$. Our procedure relies on Puiseux series expansions and does not require to compute a system of generators of the saturated ideal of $R$. We focus on the case where this saturated ideal has dimension one and we discuss extensions of this work in higher dimensions. We provide experimental results illustrating the benefits of our algorithms