We show that a certain class of varieties with origin in physics generates (additively) the Denef-Loeser ring of motives. In particular, this disproves a conjecture of M. Kontsevich on the number of points of these varieties over finite fields.

Motivated by a 1993 conjecture of Stanley and Stembridge, Shareshian and Wachs conjectured that the characteristic map takes the character of the dot action of the symmetric group on the cohomology of a regular semisimple Hessenberg variety to ωXG(t), where XG(t) is the chromatic quasisymmetric function of the incomparability graph G of the corresponding natural unit interval order, and ω is the usual involution on symmetric functions. We prove the Shareshian-Wachs conjecture.Our proof uses the local invariant cycle theorem of Beilinson-Bernstein-Deligne to obtain a surjection, which we call the local invariant cycle map, from the cohomology of a regular Hessenberg variety of Jordan type λ to a space of local invariant cycles. As λ ranges over all partitions, the local invariant cycles collectively contain all the information about the dot action on a regular semisimple Hessenberg variety. We then prove a result showing that, under suitable hypotheses, the local invariant cycle map is an isomorphism if and only if the special fiber has palindromic cohomology. (This is a general theorem, which independent of the Hessenberg variety context.) Applying this result to the universal family of Hessenberg varieties, we show that, in our case, the surjections are actually isomorphisms, thus reducing the Shareshian-Wachs conjecture to computing the cohomology of a regular Hessenberg variety. But this cohomology has already been described combinatorially by Tymoczko, and, using a new reciprocity theorem for certain quasisymmetric functions, we show that Tymoczko's description coincides with the combinatorics of the chromatic quasisymmetric function.

Recently, V. Chernousov, S. Gille and A. Merkurjev have obtained a decomposition of the motive of an isotropic smooth projective homogeneous variety analogous to the Bruhat decomposition. Using the method of A. Bialynicki-Birula and a corollary, which is essentially due to S. del Baño, I generalize this decomposition to the case of a (possibly anisotropic) smooth projective variety homogeneous under the action of an isotropic reductive group. This answers a question of N. Karpenko.

We prove that the essential dimension of the spinor group Spin n grows exponentially with n and use this result to show that quadratic forms with trivial discriminant and Hasse-Witt invariant are more complex, in high dimensions, than previously expected.

Abstract. An action of the Steenrod algebra is constructed on the mod p Chow theory of varieties over a field of characteristic different from p, answering a question posed in Fulton's Intersection Theory. The action agrees with the action of the Steenrod algebra used by Voevodsky in his proof of the Milnor conjecture. However, the construction uses only basic functorial properties of equivariant intersection theory.