Initial ideals of Pfaffian ideals (Q2188691)

The aim of the paper is to establish the relationship between secant ideals and initial ideals of the ideal \(I_{2,n}\) generated by the Plücker equations, i.e. the ideal of the Grassmann variety \(\operatorname{Gr}(2,\mathbb{C}^n)\). It is a known fact that the \((r-1)\)-secant ideal of \(I_{2,n}\) is generated by the \(2r \times 2r\) subpfaffians of a generic skew-symmetric matrix. Given a phylogenetic tree \(\mathcal{T}\), one can define the \textit{Plücker tree ideal} of \(\mathcal{T}\) as the initial ideal \(J_{\mathcal{T}}\) of \(I_{2,n}\) determined by a suitable weight vector associated to the tree. The main result is to show that a conjecture on the equality between the initial ideal of the \(r\)-secant ideal of \(I_{2,n}\) and the \(r\)-secant ideal of \(J_{\mathcal{T}}\) fails for a class of phylogenetic trees. On the other hand the author establishes a necessary and sufficient condition to make the conjecture true in terms of \textit{cherries} of the tree. In order to achieve this result, it is shown that the initial ideal of the \(r\)-secant ideal of \(I_{2,n}\) is always prime. Eventually the author proves that the dimensions of the initial ideal of the \(2\)-secant ideal of \(I_{2,n}\) and the \(2\)-secant ideal of \(J_{\mathcal{T}}\) are equal computing them via tropical techniques.