A topological proof of the Shapiro-Shapiro conjecture (Q2052214)

A typical question of the real Schubert calculus is whether the intersection of real Schubert cells is totally real. It is, in fact, a very rare event. The Shapiro-Shapiro conjecture posed in 90s asserts that the osculating flags of a real normal curve always define real Schubert cells whose intersection is transversal and totally real. One of the formulations of the Shapiro-Shapiro conjecture is as follows: If \(f_1(z),\dots,f_d(z)\in{\mathbb C}[z]\) are linearly independent polynomials such that the Wronski determinant \(Wr(f_1,\dots,f_d)\) has only real roots, then \(f_1,\dots,f_d\) span a real subspace in \({\mathbb C}[z]\). There were found links between this conjecture and a variety of problems in combinatorics, representation theory, families over the moduli space of stable marked rations curves \({\mathcal M}_{0,n}\). The was settled in affirmative by \textit{E. Mukhin} et al. [Ann. Math. (2) 170, No. 2, 863--881 (2009; Zbl 1213.14101); J. Am. Math. Soc. 22, No. 4, 909--940 (2009; Zbl 1205.17026)], using heavy techniques from quantum integrable systems, Fuchsian differential equations, and representation theory. The paper under review suggests a completely different proof of the Shapiro-Shapiro conjecture based on geometric and topological methods. It is known that the Wronski map from a Schubert cell in the Grassmannian of linear subspaces spanned by polynomials \(f_1,\dots,f_d\) of given degrees to the projectivized space of polynomials of degree \(n=\sum_i\deg f_i-d(d-1)/2\) is finite of the degree equal to the number of standard Young tableaux of a certain shape. On the other side, the degree of the Wronski map equals \(\chi^\lambda(1^n)\), the value of the character of the symmetric group \(S_n\) determined by \(\deg f_1,\dots,\deg f_d\). The authors prove that the restriction of the Wronski map to the real part of the Grassmannian with the target set formed by polynomials having only real roots has the topological degree \(\chi^\lambda(1^n)\). This implies the Shapiro-Shapiro conjecture. The key ingredient of the proof is the so-called character orientation of the components of the source space of the restricted real Wronski map. By construction, the characted orientation is defined globally on each component of the source. Then one takes a real polynomial of degree \(n\) with \(n\) real roots, for which the fibre of the Wronski map can be explicitly described. The elements of the fibre are joined with paths along which the change of the character orientation obeys the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule, and this finally yields that the signed count of the points in the fibre amounts to the evaluation of \(\chi^\lambda(1^n)\). The same approach applied to the restrictions of the real Wronski map to the target spaces formed by real polynomials with \(n_1\le n\) real roots provides non-trivial lower bounds to the topological degree of these restrictions in terms of other values of the same character.