Tropical representation of Weyl groups associated with certain rational varieties (Q1018423)

The theory of birational representations of Weyl groups associated with algebraic varieties has its origins in work of Coble and Kantor and of Du Val. They showed that certain types of Cremona transformations act on the configuration space \(X_{m,n}\) of \(n\) points in general position in the projective space \(\mathbb P^{m-1}\). From this one deduces a birational action on \(X_{m,n}\) of the Weyl group \(W(T_{2,m,n-m})\) associated to the Dynkin diagram \(T_{2,m,n-m}\) [see \textit{V.\ G.\ Kac}, Infinite dimensional Lie algebras. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1990; Zbl 0716.17022), \S4.7-4.10]. Dolgachev and Ortland showed that the Cremona action of \(W(T_{2,m,n-m})\) induces pseudo-isomorphisms between certain rational varieties (\textit{generalized Del Pezzo varieties}) blown up from \(\mathbb P^{m-1}\) at \(n\) points in general position. In the paper under review the authors generalize the above results to Weyl groups corresponding to certain Dynkin diagrams \(T^{\mathbf k}_{\mathbf l}\), where \(\mathbf k\) and \(\mathbf l\) are \(N\)-tuples of strictly positive integers. In Section~2 they construct the roots and coroots of \(T^{\mathbf k}_{\mathbf l}\) in the Néron-Severi bilattice \(N(X)=(H_2(X,\mathbb Z),H^2(X,\mathbb Z))\) of a blowup \(\epsilon:X\to(\mathbb P^1)^N\) along certain subvarieties that are not only point sets. The construction of \(X\) involves certain parameters and one obtains a family of varieties \(X_a\) where \(a\) runs through tuples of so-called multiplicative root variables. The Weyl group \(W=W(T_{2,m,n-m})\) acts on these tuples. It is shown (Thm 2.2) that the action of \(W\) on \(N(X)\) lifts to a birational action \(w:X_a\to X_{w(a)}\) on the family \(X_a\). To understand the action of \(W\) on defining polynomials of exceptional divisors the authors introduce in Section~3 a geometric framework of \(\tau\)-functions. If \(T^{\mathbf k}_{\mathbf l}\) is of affine type, then the action of the lattice part of \(W\) on \(N(X)\) provides a discrete dynamical system of Painlevé type. In Section~4 the \(A_n^{(1)}\) and \(D_n^{(1)}\) cases are demonstrated. In Section~5 the authors indicate some relationships between the \(\tau\)-functions and the universal characters \(S_{[\lambda,\mu]}\) which describe the irreducible character of the rational representation of \(\text{GL}_n(\mathbb C)\) associated to the pair of partitions \([\lambda,\mu]\).