The isomorphism problem for Grassmannian Schubert varieties (Q6115735)

Let \(r\) and \(n\) be two positive integers such that \(1\leq r \leq n-1\). Let \(G_{r,n}\) denote the Grassmannian of all \(r\)-dimensional complex vector subspaces of \(\mathbb{C}^{n}\). Schubert varieties in \(G_{r,n}\) are indexed by Young diagrams contained in a rectangle with \(r\) number of rows and \(n-r\) number of columns of boxes. In the paper under review, the authors prove the following. {Theorem}. Schubert varieties in potentially different Grassmannians are isomorphic as varieties if and only if their corresponding Young diagrams are identical up to a transposition. Further, the authors of the paper under review consider the problem of isomorphic Richardson varieties in different Grassmannains. Recall that a Richardson variety in a flag variety is the intersection of a Schubert variety and an opposite Schubert variety. In case of a Grassmannian, the two Schubert varieties correspond to two Young diagrams. When the first diagram contains the latter, the difference of these diagrams is called a skew diagram. Therefore, non-empty Richardson varieties in the Grassmannain \(G_{r,n}\) are indexed by skew diagrams. In the paper under review, to every skew diagram, the authors assign a poset structure on the set of its boxes. Further, they say that two posets are said to be semi-isomorphic as posets if there is a bijection \(f\) between their sets of connected components such that for every connected component \(P_{i}\) (\(1\leq i \leq l\)) of \(P\), either \(P_{i}\) is isomorphic to the corresponding connected component \(f(P_{i})\) of \(Q\) or \(P_{i}^{op}\) is isomorphic to \(f(P_{i})\), where \(P_{i}^{op}\) is the opposite poset of \(P_{i}\) given by the reverse order. In the paper under review, the authors prove the following. {Proposition}. If two skew diagrams are semi-isomorphic as posets, then the corresponding Richardson varieties in potentially different Grassmannains are isomorphic as varieties. The authors also conjecture the converse of this Proposition.