This work presents a range of triangulated characterizations for important classes of singularities such as derived splinters, rational singularities, and Du Bois singularities. An invariant called “level” in a triangulated category can be used to measure the failure of a variety to have a prescribed singularity type. We provide explicit computations of this invariant for reduced Nagata schemes of Krull dimension one and for affine cones over smooth projective hypersurfaces. Furthermore, these computations are utilized to produce upper bounds for Rouquier dimension on the respective bounded derived categories.

We study the behaviour of representation varieties of quivers with relations under the operation of node splitting. We show how splitting a node gives a correspondence between certain closed subvarieties of representation varieties for different algebras, which preserves properties like normality or having rational singularities. Furthermore, we describe how the defining equations of such closed subvarieties change under the correspondence.

By working in the ‘relative setting’ (splitting one node at a time), we demonstrate that there are many nonhereditary algebras whose irreducible components of representation varieties are all normal with rational singularities. We also obtain explicit generators of the prime defining ideals of these irreducible components. This class contains all radical square zero algebras, but also many others, as illustrated by examples throughout the paper. We also show that this is true when irreducible components are replaced by orbit closures, for a more restrictive class of algebras. Lastly, we provide applications to decompositions of moduli spaces of semistable representations of certain algebras.

Given an $n$-dimensional variety $Z$ with rational singularities, we conjecture that if $f:Y\rightarrow Z$ is a resolution of singularities whose reduced exceptional divisor $E$ has simple normal crossings, then

$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle R^{n-1}f_{\ast }\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}_{Y}(\log E)=0. & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$

$Z$

$D$

$n$

$X$

$\mathscr{O}_{X}(\ast D)$

$n-3$

This paper introduces the notion of a derived splinter. Roughly speaking, a scheme is a derived splinter if it splits off from the coherent cohomology of any proper cover. Over a field of characteristic 0, this condition characterises rational singularities, as suggested by the work of Kovács. Our main theorem asserts that over a field of characteristic p, derived splinters are the same as (underived) splinters, i.e. schemes that split off from any finite cover. Using this result, we answer some questions of Karen Smith concerning the extension of Serre/Kodaira-type vanishing results beyond the class of ample line bundles in positive characteristic; these are purely projective geometric statements independent of singularity considerations. In fact, we can prove ‘up to finite cover’ analogues in characteristic p of many vanishing theorems known in characteristic 0. All these results fit naturally in the study of F-singularities, and are motivated by a desire to understand the direct summand conjecture.

Let π : X [xlarr ] Y be a good quotient of a smooth variety X by a reductive algebraic group G and 1[les ]k≤ dim (Y) an integer. We prove that if, locally, any invariant horizontal differential k-form on X (resp. any regular differential k-form on Y) is a Kähler differential form on Y then codim(Ysing)>k+1. We also prove that the dualizing sheaf on Y is the sheaf of invariant horizontal dim(Y)-forms.

This article can be divided into two loosely connected parts. The first part is devoted to proving a singular version of the logarithmic Kodaira–Akizuki–Nakano vanishing theorem of Esnault and Viehweg in the style of Navarro-Aznar et al. This in turn is used to prove other vanishing theorems. In the second part, these vanishing theorems are used to prove an Arakelov–Parshin type boundedness result for families of canonically polarized varieties with rational Gorenstein singularities.