The motive of the Hilbert scheme of points in all dimensions

Abstract

We prove a closed formula for the generating function $\mathsf Z_d(t)$ of the motives $[\mathrm{Hilb}^d(\mathbb A^n)_0] \in K_0(\mathrm{Var}_{\mathbb C})$ of punctual Hilbert schemes, summing over $n$, for fixed $d>0$. The result is an expression for $\mathsf Z_d(t)$ as the product of the zeta function of $\mathbb P^{d-1}$ and a polynomial $\mathsf P_d(t)$, which in particular implies that $\mathsf Z_d(t)$ is a rational function. Moreover, we reduce the complexity of $\mathsf P_d(t)$ to the computation of $d-8$ initial data, and therefore give explicit formulas for $\mathsf Z_d(t)$ in the cases $d \leq 8$, which in turn yields a formula for $[\mathrm{Hilb}^{\leq 8}(X)]$ for any smooth variety $X$. We perform a similar analysis for the Quot scheme of points, obtaining explicit formulas for the full generating function (summing over all ranks and dimensions) for $d \leq 4$. In the limit $n \to \infty$, we prove that the motives $[\mathrm{Hilb}^d(\mathbb A^n)_0]$ stabilise to the class of the infinite Grassmannian $\mathrm{Gr}(d-1,\infty)$. Finally, exploiting our geometric methods, we conjecture (and partially confirm) a structural result on the 'error' measuring the discrepancy between the count of higher dimensional partitions and MacMahon's famous guess.