The geometry of products of minors (Q1275663)

The authors study the Newton polytope \(\sum (m,n)\) of the product of all minors of an \(m\times n\)-matrix \(A=(a_{ij})\) of indeterminates, that is the convex hull of all exponent vectors obtained when this product is expanded as a polynomial in the \(a_{ij}\). In particular, the outer normal vectors of the facets are investigated. For instance, it is shown that the \(0\)-\(1\) -matrices in which the ones form the union of two ``proper'' rectangles constitute normal vectors of facets. On the other hand, there are facets that need arbitrarily large integers for any integral normal. For the special cases \(\sum (2,n)\) and \(\sum (3,3)\) all the facet normals are determined. Furthermore, formulas for the support function of \(\sum (m,n)\) are derived. The whole paper is based on the fact that \(\sum (m,n)\) is equal to the secondary polytope of the product of simplices \(\Delta _{m-1}\times \Delta _{n-1}\), this is (up to a scalar multiple) the same as the fiber polytope of the projection of \(\Delta _{mn-1}\) onto \(\Delta _{m-1}\times \Delta _{n-1}\).