Incidence geometry in a Weyl chamber. II: \(SL_n\) (Q2182616): Difference between revisions

This paper is devoted to a combinatorial study of a family of hyperplane arrangements that arises from theoretical physics. Specifically, the authors study the arrangement \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) consisting of the hyperplanes orthogonal to the weights of the first and the second fundamental representations of the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{sl}_n\) inside the dual fundamental Weyl chamber. The arrangement \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) is defined as follows. Consider the vector space \(\mathfrak{h}_s \cong \mathbb{R}^{n-1}\) of all real diagonal matrices of trace zero. This is a Cartan subalgebra of \(\mathfrak{sl}_n\). Let \(x_i \in \mathfrak{h}_s^*\) be the linear form that returns the entry \((i,i)\) of an element of \(\mathfrak{sl}_n\). Then \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) is the collection of the \(n\) hyperplanes \(\ker(x_i)\) for \(i=1, \dotsc, n\) and the \(\binom{n}{2}\) hyperplanes \(\ker(x_i + x_j)\) for \(1 \leq i < j \leq n\). This arrangement is further restricted to the Weyl chamber \(\{x_1 > x_2 > \dotsb > x_n \}\). The main results of this paper are: (1) generating functions for the number of \(k\)-flats and of \(k\)-faces of \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\); (2) a classification of extremal rays and chambers of \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\). The paper builds on a prior work of the same authors, namely [ibid. 119, Article ID 102048, 29 p. (2020; Zbl 1440.52020)], which deals with the case of \(\mathfrak{gl}_n\). For instance, the arrangement \(I(\mathfrak{gl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) was previously shown to have \(2^n\) chambers, all of them being simplicial. In this paper, it is shown that all chambers of \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) are obtained as intersections between chambers of \(I(\mathfrak{gl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) and \(\mathfrak{sl}_n\); in addition, the number of chambers of \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) is given by the formula \[ 2^n - 2\binom{n}{\left\lfloor \frac{n}{2} \right\rfloor} + \delta_{n,0} + \delta_{n,1} + \delta_{n,2} \] (Theorem 3.3). An enumeration of the \textit{simplicial} chambers of \(I(\mathfrak{sl}_n, V \oplus \bigwedge^2)\) (Theorem 3.11) shows that not all chambers are simplicial, contrary to the \(\mathfrak{gl}_n\) case. Several examples are given for small values of \(n\).