Bounding embedded singularities of Hilbert schemes of points on affine three space.

The Hilbert scheme Hilb n ℂ 3 of n points on ℂ 3 can be expressed as the critical locus of a regular function on a smooth variety . Recent development in birational geometry suggests a study of singularities of the pair (, Hilb n ℂ 3) using jet schemes. In this paper, we use a comparison between Hilb n ℂ 3 and the scheme C 3 , n of three commuting n × n matrices to estimate the log canonical threshold of (, Hilb n ℂ 3). As a consequence, we see that although both dim and dim Hilb n ℂ 3 have asymptotic growth O (n 2) , the largest multiplicity of any points on Hilb n ℂ 3 has at most linear growth O (n). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]