The Hilbert scheme of points on a threefold: Broken Gorenstein structures and linkage

Abstract We investigate the Hilbert scheme of points on a smooth threefold. We introduce a notion of broken Gorenstein structure for finite schemes, and show that its existence guarantees smoothness on the Hilbert scheme. Moreover, we conjecture that it is exhaustive: every smooth point admits a broken Gorenstein structure. We give an explicit characterization of the smooth points on the Hilbert scheme of <m:math xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <m:msup> <m:mi mathvariant="double-struck">A</m:mi> <m:mn>3</m:mn> </m:msup> </m:math> \mathbb{A}^{3} corresponding to monomial ideals. We investigate the nature of the singular points, and prove several conjectures by Hu. Along the way, we obtain a number of additional results, related to linkage classes, nested Hilbert schemes, and a bundle on the Hilbert scheme of a surface.