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noncommutative topology (4)

Published February 9, 2006 by lievenlb

For a
qurve (aka formally smooth algebra) A a *block* is a (possibly infinite
dimensional over the basefield) left A-module X such that its
endomorphism algebra $D = End_A(X)$ is a division algebra and X
(considered as a right D-module) is finite dimensional over D. If a
block X is finite dimensional over the basefield, we call it a *brick*
(aka a *Schur representation*). We want to endow the set of all blocks
with a topology and look at the induced topology on the subset of
bricks. It is an old result due to Claus Ringel
that there is a natural one-to-one correspondence between blocks of A
and algebra epimorphisms (in the categorical sense meaning that identify
equality of morphisms to another algebra) $A \rightarrow M_n(D) =
End_D(X_D)$. This result is important as it allows us to define a
partial order on teh set of all A-blocks via the notion of
*specialization*. If X and Y are two A-blocks with corresponding
epimorphisms $A \rightarrow M_n(D),~A \rightarrow M_m(E)$ we say that Y
is a specialization of X and we denote $X \leq Y$ provided there is an
epimorphism $A \rightarrow B$ making the diagram below commute

$\xymatrix{& M_n(D) \\\ A \ar[ru] \ar[r] \ar[rd] & B \ar[u]^i
\ar[d]^p \\\ & M_m(E)} $

where i is an inclusion and p is a
onto. This partial ordering was studied by Paul Cohn, George Bergman and
Aidan Schofield who use
the partial order to define the _closed subsets_ of blocks to be
those closed under specialization.

There are two important
constructions of A-blocks for a qurve A. One is Aidan’s construction of
a universal localization wrt. a *Sylvester rank function* (and which
should be of use in noncommutative rationality problems), the other
comes from invariant theory and is related to Markus Reineke’s monoid in
the special case when A is the path algebra of a quiver. Let X be a
GL(n)-closed irreducible subvariety of an irreducible component of
n-dimensional A-representations such that X contains a brick (and hence
a Zariski open subset of bricks), then taking PGL(n)-equivariant maps
from X to $M_n(\mathbb{C})$ determines a block (by inverting all central
elements). Now, take a *sensible* topology on the set of all A-bricks.
I would go for defining as the open wrt. a block X, the set of all
A-bricks which become simples after extending by the epimorphism
determined by a block Y such that $Y \leq X$. (note that this seems to
be different from the topology coming from the partial ordering…).
Still, wrt. this topology one can then again define a *noncommutative
topology* on the Abelian category $\mathbf{rep}~A$ of all finite
dimensional A-representations
but this time using filtrations with successive quotients being bricks
rather than simples.

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noncommutative topology (3)

Published February 3, 2006 by lievenlb

For
finite dimensional hereditary algebras, one can describe its
noncommutative topology (as developed in part 2)
explicitly, using results of Markus
Reineke in The monoid
of families of quiver representations. Consider a concrete example,
say

$A = \begin{bmatrix} \mathbb{C} & V \\ 0 & \mathbb{C}
\end{bmatrix}$ where $V$ is an n-dimensional complex vectorspace, or
equivalently, A is the path algebra of the two point, n arrow quiver
$\xymatrix{\vtx{} \ar@/^/[r] \ar[r] \ar@/_/[r] & \vtx{}} $
Then, A has just 2 simple representations S and T (the vertex reps) of
dimension vectors s=(1,0) and t=(0,1). If w is a word in S and T we can
consider the set $\mathbf{r}_w$ of all A-representations having a
Jordan-Holder series with factors the terms in w (read from left to
right) so $\mathbf{r}_w \subset \mathbf{rep}_{(a,b)}~A$ when there are a
S-terms and b T-terms in w. Clearly all these subsets can be given the
structure of a monoid induced by concatenation of words, that is
$\mathbf{r}_w \star \mathbf{r}_{w’} = \mathbf{r}_{ww’}$ which is
Reineke’s *composition monoid*. In this case it is generated by
$\mathbf{r}_s$ and $\mathbf{r}_t$ and in the composition monoid the
following relations hold among these two generators
$\mathbf{r}_t^{\star n+1} \star \mathbf{r}_s = \mathbf{r}_t^{\star n}
\star \mathbf{r}_s \star \mathbf{r}_t \quad \text{and} \quad
\mathbf{r}_t \star \mathbf{r}_s^{\star n+1} = \mathbf{r}_s \star
\mathbf{r}_t \star \mathbf{r}_s^{\star n}$ With these notations we can
now see that the left basic open set in the noncommutative topology
(associated to a noncommutative word w in S and T) is of the form
$\mathcal{O}^l_w = \bigcup_{w’} \mathbf{r}_{w’}$ where the union is
taken over all words w’ in S and T such that in the composition monoid
the relation holds $\mathbf{r}_{w’} = \mathbf{r}_w \star \mathbf{r}_{u}$
for another word u. Hence, each op these basic opens hits a large number
of $~\mathbf{rep}_{\alpha}$, in fact far too many for our purposes….
So, what do we want? We want to define a noncommutative notion of
birationality and clearly we want that if two algebras A and B are
birational that this is the same as saying that some open subsets of
their resp. $\mathbf{rep}$’s are homeomorphic. But, what do we
understand by *noncommutative birationality*? Clearly, if A and B are
prime Noethrian, this is clear. Both have a ring of fractions and we
demand them to be isomorphic (as in the commutative case). For this
special subclass the above noncommutative topology based on the Zariski
topology on the simples may be fine.

However, most qurves don’t have
a canonical ‘ring of fractions’. Usually they will have infinitely
many simple Artinian algebras which should be thought of as being
_a_ ring of fractions. For example, in the finite dimensional
example A above, if follows from Aidan Schofield‘s work Representations of rings over skew fields that
there is one such for every (a,b) with gcd(a,b)=1 and (a,b) satisfying
$a^2+b^2-n a b < 1$ (an indivisible Shur root for A).

And
what is the _noncommutative birationality result_ we are aiming
for in each of these cases? Well, the inspiration for this comes from
another result by Aidan (although it is not stated as such in the
paper…) Birational
classification of moduli spaces of representations of quivers. In
this paper Aidan proves that if you take one of these indivisible Schur
roots (a,b) above, and if you look at $\alpha_n = n(a,b)$ that then the
moduli space of semi-stable quiver representations for this multiplied
dimension vector is birational to the quotient variety of
$1-(a^2+b^2-nab)$-tuples of $ n \times n $-matrices under simultaneous
conjugation.

So, *morally speaking* this should be stated as the
fact that A is (along the ray determined by (a,b)) noncommutative
birational to the free algebra in $1-(a^2+b^2-nab)$ variables. And we
want a noncommutative topology on $\mathbf{rep}~A$ to encode all these
facts… As mentioned before, this can be done by replacing simples with
bricks (or if you want Schur representations) but that will have to wait
until next week.

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a noncommutative topology 2

Published February 1, 2006 by lievenlb

A *qurve*
is an affine algebra such that $~\Omega^1~A$ is a projective
$~A~$-bimodule. Alternatively, it is an affine algebra allowing lifts of
algebra morphisms through nilpotent ideals and as such it is the ‘right’
noncommutative generalization of Grothendieck’s smoothness criterium.
Examples of qurves include : semi-simple algebras, coordinate rings of
affine smooth curves, hereditary orders over curves, group algebras of
virtually free groups, path algebras of quivers etc.

Hence, qurves
behave a lot like curves and as such one might hope to obtain one day a
‘birational’ classification of them, if we only knew what we mean
by this. Whereas the etale classification of them is understood (see for
example One quiver to
rule them all or Qurves and quivers )
we don’t know what the Zariski topology of a qurve might be.

Usually, one assigns to a qurve $~A~$ the Abelian category of all its
finite dimensional representations $\mathbf{rep}~A$ and we would like to
equip this set with a topology of sorts. Because $~A~$ is a qurve, its
scheme of n-dimensional representations $\mathbf{rep}_n~A$ is a smooth
affine variety for each n, so clearly $\mathbf{rep}~A$ being the disjoint
union of these acquires a trivial but nice commutative topology.
However, we would like open sets to hit several of the components
$\mathbf{rep}_n~A$ thereby ‘connecting’ them to form a noncommutative
topological space associated to $~A~$.

In a noncommutative topology on
rep A I proposed a way to do this and though the main idea remains a
good one, I’ll ammend the construction next time. Whereas we don’t know
of a topology on the whole of $\mathbf{rep}~A$, there is an obvious
ordinary topology on the subset $\mathbf{simp}~A$ of all simple finite
dimensional representations, namely the induced topology of the Zariski
topology on $~\mathbf{spec}~A$, the prime spectrum of twosided prime ideals
of $~A~$. As in commutative algebraic geometry the closed subsets of the
prime spectrum consist of all prime ideals containing a given twosided
ideal. A typical open subset of the induced topology on $\mathbf{simp}~A$
hits many of the components $\mathbf{rep}_n~A$, but how can we extend it to
a topology on the whole of the category $\mathbf{rep}~A$ ?

Every
finite dimensional representation has (usually several) Jordan-Holder
filtrations with simple successive quotients, so a natural idea is to
use these filtrations to extend the topology on the simples to all
representations by restricting the top (or bottom) of the Jordan-Holder
sequence. Let W be the set of all words w such as $U_1U_2 \ldots U_k$
where each $U_i$ is an open subset of $\mathbf{simp}~A$. We can now define
the *left basic open set* $\mathcal{O}_w^l$ consisting of all finite
dimensional representations M having a Jordan-Holder sequence such that
the i-th simple factor (counted from the bottom) belongs to $U_i$.
(Similarly, we can define a *right basic open set* by counting from the
top or a *symmetric basic open set* by merely requiring that the simples
appear in order in the sequence). One final technical (but important)
detail is that we should really consider equivalence classes of left
basic opens. If w and w’ are two words we will denote by $\mathbf{rep}(w
\cup w’)$ the set of all finite dimensional representations having a
Jordan-Holder filtration with enough simple factors to have one for each
letter in w and w’. We then define $\mathcal{O}^l_w \equiv
\mathcal{O}^l_{w’}$ iff $\mathcal{O}^l_w \cap \mathbf{rep}(w \cup w’) =
\mathcal{O}^l_{w’} \cap \mathbf{rep}(w \cup w’)$. Equivalence classes of
these left basic opens form a partially ordered set (induced by
set-theoretic inclusion) with a unique minimal element 0 (the empty set
corresponding to the empty word) and a uunique maximal element 1 (the
set $\mathbf{rep}~A$ corresponding to the letter $w=\mathbf{simp}~A$).
Set-theoretic union induces an operation $\vee$ and the operation
$~\wedge$ is induced by concatenation of words, that is,
$\mathcal{O}^l_w \wedge \mathcal{O}^l_{w’} \equiv \mathcal{O}^l_{ww’}$.
This then defines a **left noncommutative topology** on $\mathbf{rep}~A$ in
the sense of Van Oystaeyen (see [part
1](http://www.neverendingbooks.org/index.php/noncommutative-topology-1 $
). To be precise, it satisfies the axioms in the left and middle column
of the following picture and
similarly, the right basic opens give a right noncommutative topology
(satisfying the axioms of the middle and right columns) whereas the
symmetric opens satisfy all axioms giving the basis of a noncommutative
topology. Even for very simple finite dimensional qurves such as
$\begin{bmatrix} \mathbb{C} & \mathbb{C} \\ 0 & \mathbb{C}
\end{bmatrix}$ this defines a properly noncommutative topology on the
Abelian category of all finite dimensional representations which
obviously respect isomorphisms so is really a noncommutative topology on
the orbits. Still, while this may give a satisfactory local definition,
in gluing qurves together one would like to relax simple representations
to *Schurian* representations. This can be done but one has to replace
the topology coming from the Zariski topology on the prime spectrum by
the partial ordering on the *bricks* of the qurve, but that will have to
wait until next time…

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