Staged tree models with toric structure (Q2133929)

A staged tree model is a statistical model defined on a rooted tree whose edges are labeled by reals representing conditional probabilities, with the condition that the sum of labels of the edges starting from any vertex is \(1\). One can associate to such models \(T\) a real semialgebraic variety \(M_T\) in \(\mathbb R^q\), where \(q\) is the number of maximal paths of the tree, defined by the map which sends a choice of labels to the products of the labels along maximal paths. The main target of the authors is to study toric structures over \(M_T\), i.e. structures whose ideals are generated by binomials. When the tree is balanced, then the ideal of \(M_T\) is directly generated by binomials. The authors find conditions, which are satisfied in many non-balanced cases, for which there exists a determinantal ideal \(J\) which is generated by binomials and defines the variety \(M_T\).