Monday, 30 October 2006

ag.algebraic geometry - Computing 3 points Gromov-Witten invariants of the Grassmannian

This is from an exercise in Koch, Vainsencher - An invitation to quamtum cohomology.



Background



The exercise asks to compute the 3-points Gromov-Witten invariants of the Grassmannian G=mathopGr(1,mathbbP3)=mathopGr(2,4)G=mathopGr(1,mathbbP3)=mathopGr(2,4) via the enumerative interepretation. In particular my problem is with computing the invariant I2(pcdotpcdotp)I2(pcdotpcdotp), where pp is the class of a point on GG. This is the number of rational curves of degree 22 through 33 generic points on GG. Here we see GG as embedded by the Plucker map, and the degree is defined accordingly.



A rational curve CsubsetGCsubsetG of degree dd will sweep out a rational ruled surface SS of degree dd in mathbbP3mathbbP3; up to here I agree with the hints of the book. The problem is the following hint:




Show that the condition on CC of passing through a point qinGqinG corresponds to the condition on SS of containing the line in mathbbP3mathbbP3 corresponding to qq.




This seems to me plain false. Of course one implication is true, but is absolutely possible that SS contains a line without CC passing through the corresponding point.



For instance, when d=1d=1, CC is a line on the Grassmannian, and it is well-known that these have the form ellmidainellsubsetAellmidainellsubsetA, where aa is a point and AA a plane of mathbbP3mathbbP3. In this case SS is the plane AA, so it contains many lines which do not pass through aa, hence these lines are not parametrized by CC.



Similarly, when d=2d=2, the surface SS can be a smooth quadric, which has two distinct rulings of lines; one will correspond to lines parametrized by CC, but the other one will not. To see that a smooth quadric can actually arise, just invert the construction. Starting from a smooth quadric SS take any line ellsubsetSellsubsetS. There is a natural map elltoGelltoG given by sending a point qinellqinell to the unique line in the other ruling passing through qq. The image of this map is a curve CsubsetGCsubsetG, such that the associated surface is SS itself.



Given the hint, the book goes on to say




Show that I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1, by interpreting this number as a count of quadrics containing three lines.




Now I certainly agree that given three generic lines in mathbbP3mathbbP3 there is a unique quadric containing them. To see this, just choose 33 points on each line: a quadric will contain the lines iff it contains the 99 points, and it can be shown that these 99 points give 99 independent conditions.



Still I do no see how this implies the count I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1. What I guess happens is that generically we will have two lines in one ruling and one line in the other, so that the curve CsubsetGCsubsetG which sweeps SS will only pass through one or two of the assigned points.



Question



What is the right count? Is there something wrong in what I said above? Is it even true that I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1I2(pcdotpcdotp)=1?

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