Thursday, 18 October 2007

ag.algebraic geometry - Why do automorphism groups of algebraic varieties have natural algebraic group structure?

It is not always true that the automorphism group of an algebraic variety has a natural algebraic group structure. For example, the automorphism group of mathbbA2 includes all the maps of the form (x,y)mapsto(x,y+f(x)) where f is any polynomial. I haven't thought through how to say this precisely in terms of functors, but this subgroup morally should be a connected infinite dimensional object, and is thus not a subobject of an algebraic group.



On the other hand, I believe that the automorphism group of a projective algebraic variety, X, can be given the structure of algebraic group in a fairly natural way. This is something I've thought about myself, but not written down a careful proof nor found a reference for: For any automorphism f of X, consider the graph of f as a subscheme of XtimesX, and thus a point of the Hilbert scheme of XtimesX. In this way, we get an embedding of point sets from mathrmAut(X) into mathrmHilb(XtimesX).



I believe that it should be easy to show that (1) mathrmAut(X) is open in mathrmHilb(XtimesX), and thus acquires a natural scheme structure and (2) composition of automorphisms is a map of schemes.

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