On the Smoothness of the Quot Functor

Abstract: For a commutative ring k,we consider free k-modules E, endowing them with k[x_1,...,x_m]-module structuresthrough a ring homomorphism k[x_1,...,x_m] -> End_Z(E). These structures arethen inspected by encoding the actions of the unknowns x_i in matricesX_1,...,X_m. We further introduce the concepts of lifts and formal smoothnessfor functors, and define the Quot_{F/A/k}^n functor acting on the category ofk-algebras, taking some k-algebra B to the set of quotients of the form (F ⊗_k B)/N, which are locallyfree as B-modules. Lastly, we find concrete examples of modules showing thatthe functors Hilb_{k[x,y,z]/k}^4 and Quot_{⊕^2 k[x,y]/k[x,y]/k}^2 are not formally smooth