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I am reading Fulton's intersection theory but I have a poor intuition about the normal cone. I know the cone $C_{Y/X}$ is the normal bundle if $Y\subset X$ is smooth. I would appreciate it if someone could show what the normal cone of the following schemes of $\mathbb{A}^2$.

  1. An intersection of two lines $k[x,y]/(xy)$.
  2. A fat line $k[x,y]/(x^k)$
  3. A fat point $k[x,y]/(x,y)^k$

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I'll take a stab at a partial answer, though I'm not well-acquainted with the normal cone.

By definition, $C_{Y/X}=\operatorname{Spec}\left(\oplus_l I^l/I^{l+1}\right),$ where $Y\subseteq X$ is defined by the ideal $I\subseteq k[X]$ in the affine coordinate ring of $X.$ In the first case, we have $I=(xy)\subseteq k[x,y]=k[X].$ Thus, $C_{Y/X}$ has coordinate ring $\oplus_l(xy)^l/(xy)^{l+1}.$

Noticing that $(xy)^0/(xy)^1=k[x,y]/(xy),$ we see that there is a canonical surjection $\left(k[x,y]/(xy)\right)[t]\to\oplus_l(xy)^l/(xy)^{l+1}$ taking $t\mapsto xy\pmod {(xy)^2}$. Moreover, according to Fulton p.12-13, this map is an isomorphism, since $xy$ is a nonzerodivisor in $k[x,y]$ and $k[x,y]/(xy)$ is nonzero (i.e. $xy$ is a regular sequence). Thus, there is an isomorphism $C_{Y/X}\to Y\times\Bbb A^1=\operatorname{Spec}\left(k[x,y,t]/(xy)\right)$ is a cartesian product of a union of two coordinate axes with a line.

For the next example, all this analysis should work, since $x^n$ is a regular sequence of $k[x,y].$ Thus we should find that $C_{Y/X}=Y\times\Bbb A^1=\operatorname{Spec}\left(k[x,y,t]/(x^n)\right)$ is a cartesian product of a fat line with a reduced line.

For the third example, $I=(x,y)^n$ is not generated by a regular sequence, so it is not so obvious to me what the geometry is. We now have a surjection $k[x,y,t_1,\ldots, t_N]/(x,y)^n\to\oplus_l(x,y)^{nl}/(x,y)^{n(l+1)}$ taking $t_1\mapsto x^n,t_2\mapsto x^{n-1}y,\ldots,t_N\mapsto y^n,$ giving a closed embedding of $C_{Y/X}$ in $Y\times\Bbb A^N$ with $N={n+2\choose 2}.$ I would be happy to see further elaborations of the techniques to be pursued here.

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    Thank you for the detailed answer, Andrew! It is quite surprising that nothing interesting happens at the origin in example (1) & (2), as I expected that something non-trivial would occur at the singular point (such as non-reduced fiber over the origin). The last example seems very interesting; $n=3$ yields the twisted cubic . I would like to take a closer look at this. Again, many thanks! Your answer is really helpful.2012-09-12
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    Hm, in looking at your Fulton reference, isn't "regular sequence" supposed to be a sequence of elements in the max ideal of a local ring? In the first example, what local ring are we looking at? The lemma in Fulton doesn't seem to apply because in map $A/I[X_1, \dots, X_d] \to \oplus I^t/I^{t+1}$, $A$ is the coordinate ring of $V$, which isn't local.2017-09-07
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    Hi @hwong557, a few ideas: First, you can always directly verify that the given map is an isomorphism in the examples, so there's no need to worry about the general algebraic facts. Second, using that localization commutes with quotients, we can take quotients first if we want. Third, usually these kinds of statements have analogues for graded rings, where we replace the unique maximal ideal by the irrelevant ideal, so there should even be analogous facts for homogeneous ideals. Cheers2017-09-14