Polar orbitopes (Q376088): Difference between revisions

From authors' abstract: The authors study polar orbitopes, i.e. convex hulls of orbits of a polar representation \(\rho : K \to \mathrm{GL}(V)\) of a compact Lie group \(K\). If the vector space \(V\) is provided with a \(K\)-invariant scalar product, the representation \(\rho\) is said to be polar if there is a linear subspace \( S \subset V\) which intersects perpendicularly all the orbits of \(K\). For example, the adjoint representations of compact Lie groups are polar. Polar representations are closely related with representations of maximal compact subgroups of real semisimple Lie groups \(G\), where maximal compact subgroup \(K\) acts on the subspace \(p \subset g\) (\(g=k+p\) is the Lie algebra of \(G\)). The face structure of orbitopes is studied by means of the gradient momentum map and it is shown that every face is exposed and is again a polar orbitope. Up to conjugation the faces are completely determined by the momentum polytope. There is a tight relation with parabolic subgroups: the set of extreme points of a face is the closed orbit of a parabolic subgroup of \(G\) and for any parabolic subgroup the closed orbit is of this form.