Tropicalization of positive Grassmannians (Q2010193)

Tropical algebraic geometry is a branch of algebraic geometry where an algebraic variety is studied by transforming it into a ``polyhedral object'' called its \textit{tropicalization}. The past decade has seen an upsurge in characterizing properties of the algebraic variety that are captured by tropicalization and its applications. Grassmanians are an important class of algebraic varieties and the study of the tropical geometry associated with them goes back to [\textit{D. Speyer} and \textit{B. Sturmfels}, Adv. Geom. 4, No. 3, 389--411 (2004; Zbl 1065.14071)]. Real Grassmanians have a subset associated to them that has lately received a lot of attention, namely its positive part also known as the \textit{positive Grassmanian} [\textit{L. Williams}, ``The positive Grassmanian, the amplituhedron, and cluster algebras'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2110.10856}]. Extending the work of [\textit{D. Speyer} and \textit{L. Williams}, J. Algebr. Comb. 22, No. 2, 189--210 (2005; Zbl 1094.14048)] for the positive part of both \(\mathrm{Gr}(3,6)\) and \(\mathrm{Gr}(3,7)\), the authors provide a combinatorial-geometric description of the tropicalization of the positive part of the Grassmanian \(\mathrm{Gr}(k,n)\) (Theorem 6.4). The main idea is to study configuration spaces of \(n\) principal flags for \(\mathrm{SL}_k\) and describe its tropicalization in terms of objects called \textit{higher laminations} [\textit{I. Le}, Geom. Topol. 20, No. 3, 1673--1735 (2016; Zbl 1348.30023)]. Roughly speaking, a higher lamination is an equivalences class of certain configurations of points in the affine building of \(\mathrm{SL}_k\). The authors then study the tropicalization of a map between the configuration space of \(n\) principal flags for \(\mathrm{SL}_k\) and the (affine cone) over the Grassmanian \(\mathrm{Gr}(k,n)\). The fibers of this tropicalization map are equivalence classes of higher laminations called \textit{horocycle laminations}, leading the authors to the combinatorial-geometric description of the tropicalization of the positive Grassmanian. The paper is largely self-contained with sections on relevant topics such as cluster algebras, configuration spaces and affine buildings.