Chern classes of blow-ups

Abstract

AbstractWe extend the classical formula of Porteous for blowing-up Chern classes to the case of blow-ups of possibly singular varieties along regularly embedded centers. The proof of this generalization is perhaps conceptually simpler than the standard argument for the nonsingular case, involving Riemann–Roch without denominators. The new approach relies on the explicit computation of an ideal, and a mild generalization of a well-known formula for the normal bundle of a proper transform ([8, B·6·10]).We also discuss alternative, very short proofs of the standard formula in some cases: an approach relying on the theory of Chern–Schwartz–MacPherson classes (working in characteristic 0), and an argument reducing the formula to a straightforward computation of Chern classes for sheaves of differential 1-forms with logarithmic poles (when the center of the blow-up is a complete intersection).