On commuting varieties of nilradicals of Borel subalgebras of reductive Lie algebras

Abstract: Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field $\mathbbm k$ of characteristic zero. We consider the commuting variety $\mathcal C(\mathfrak u)$ of the nilradical $\mathfrak u$ of the Lie algebra $\mathfrak b$ of a Borel subgroup $B$ of $G$. In case $B$ acts on $\mathfrak u$ with only a finite number of orbits, we verify that $\mathcal C(\mathfrak u)$ is equidimensional and that the irreducible components are in correspondence with the {\em distinguished} $B$-orbits in $\mathfrak u$. We observe that in general $\mathcal C(\mathfrak u)$ is not equidimensional, and determine the irreducible components of $\mathcal C(\mathfrak u)$ in the minimal cases where there are infinitely many $B$-orbits in $\mathfrak u$.