Normality of orbit closures in the enhanced nilpotent cone

Abstract

We continue the study of the closures of $GL(V)$-orbits in the enhanced nilpotent cone $V\times\cN$ begun by the first two authors. We prove that each closure is an invariant-theoretic quotient of a suitably-defined enhanced quiver variety. We conjecture, and prove in special cases, that these enhanced quiver varieties are normal complete intersections, implying that the enhanced nilpotent orbit closures are also normal.