On the motive of the Quot scheme of finite quotients of a locally free sheaf

Abstract: Let $X$ be a smooth variety, $E$ a locally free sheaf on $X$. We express the generating function of the motives $[\textrm{Quot}X(E,n)]$ in terms of the power structure on the Grothendieck ring of varieties. This extends a recent result of Bagnarol, Fantechi and Perroni for curves, and a result of Gusein-Zade, Luengo and Melle-Hern\'{a}ndez for Hilbert schemes. We compute this generating function for curves and we express the relative motive $[\textrm{Quot}{\mathbb A^d}(\mathscr{O}^{\oplus r}) \to \textrm{Sym}\, \mathbb A^d]$ as a plethystic exponential.