Edge vectors on plabic networks in the disk and amalgamation of totally non-negative Grassmannians (Q2161292)

The amalgamation of cluster varieties, introduced by \textit{V. V. Fock} and \textit{A. B. Goncharov} [Prog. Math. 253, 27--68 (2006; Zbl 1162.22014)], in the totally non-negative part of positroid varieties is explicitly described as gluing of several copies of small positive Grassmannians, \(\text{Gr}^{\mbox{TP}} (1,3)\) and \(\text{Gr}^{\mbox{TP}} (2,3)\). This construction has important topological implications and naturally appears in the computation of amplitude scatterings in \(N=4\) SYM theory. \textit{T. Lam} [``Totally nonnegative Grassmannian and Grassmann polytopes'', in: Current developments in mathematics 2014. Somerville, MA: Int. Press. 51--152(2016)] has proposed to represent amalgamation in positroid varieties by equivalence classes of relations on bipartite graphs and to identify total non-negativity via appropriate edge signatures. The authors provide an explicit geometric characterization of such signatures in the setting of the planar bicolored trivalent directed perfect networks in the disk to parametrize positroid cells \(\mathcal{S}_{\mathcal{M}}^{\text{TNN}}\subset Gr^{\text{TNN}}(k,n)\) using systems of relations for \(n\)-vectors. That is, to any such graph \(\mathcal{G}\), they associate a geometric signature satisfying both the full rank condition and the total non-negativity property on the full positroid cell. Such signature is uniquely identified by geometric indices, such as local winding and intersection number, ruled by the orientation \(\mathcal{O}\) and gauge ray direction \(\mathfrak{l}\) on \(\mathcal{G}\). The principal result is the enrichment by associating measurements not only to boundary edges or vertices, but also to internal edges. The authors also provide an explicit representation of the solution to the system of geometric relations on the network \((\mathcal{N}, \mathcal{O}, \mathfrak{l})\) of graph \(\mathcal{G}\) and positive weights. They assign canonical basis vectors in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) at the boundary sinks and define the vectors components at the edge \(e\) as summations over the directed paths from \(e\) to the given boundary sink. Such edge vectors solve the geometric system of relations on \((\mathcal N, \mathcal O, \mathfrak l)\), their components are rational in the weights with subtraction-free denominators, and have explicit expressions in terms of the conservative and edge flows, and they give explicit formulas both for the transformation rules of the edge vectors with respect to the orientation and the several gauges of the given network, and for their transformations due to moves and reductions of networks.