Categorical resolutions, poset schemes and Du Bois singularities

Abstract

We introduce the notion of a poset scheme and study the categories of quasi-coherent sheaves on such spaces. We then show that smooth poset schemes may be used to obtain categorical resolutions of singularities for usual singular schemes. We prove that a singular variety $X$ possesses such a resolution if and only if $X$ has Du Bois singularities. Finally we show that the de Rham-Du Bois complex for an algebraic variety $Y$ may be defined using any smooth poset scheme which satisfies the descent over $Y$ in the classical topology.