Motivic classes of degeneracy loci and pointed Brill-Noether varieties

Abstract

Motivic Chern and Hirzebruch classes are polynomials with K-theory and homology classes as coefficients, which specialize to Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes, K-theory classes, and Cappell-Shaneson L-classes. We provide formulas to compute the motivic Chern and Hirzebruch classes of Grassmannian and vexillary degeneracy loci. We apply our results to obtain the Hirzebruch $\chi_y$-genus of classical and one-pointed Brill-Noether varieties, and therefore their topological Euler characteristic, holomorphic Euler characteristic, and signature.