ON THE NUMBER OF POINTS OF NILPOTENT QUIVER VARIETIES OVER FINITE FIELDS

We give a closed expression for the number of points over finite fields of the Lusztig nilpotent variety associated to any quiver, in terms of Kac's A-polynomials. When the quiver has 1-loops or oriented cycles, there are several possible variants of the Lusztig nilpotent variety, and we provide formulas for the point count of each. This involves nilpotent versions of the Kac A-polynomial, which we introduce and for which we give a closed formula similar to Hua's formula for the usual Kac A-polynomial. Finally we compute the number of points over a finite field of the various strata of the Lusztig nilpotent variety involved in the geometric realization of the crystal graph.