Linear degenerations of flag varieties (Q2412548)

Linear degenerate flag varieties are degenerations of flag varieties as quiver Grassmannians. Let \(B\) be a Borel subgroup in the group \(\mathrm{SL}_{n+1}\). The classical flag variety \(\mathrm{SL}_{n+1} /B\) has an explicit realization in linear algebra terms. Namely, let \(V\) be an \(n +1\)-dimensional vector space. Then the flag variety \(\mathrm{SL}_{n+1}/B\) is isomorphic to the variety of collections \(V_1,\ldots, V_n\) of subspaces of \(V\), such that \(V_i \subset V_{i+1}\) and \(\dim V_i = i\). One can think of \(V_i\) as sitting inside its own copy of \(V\). Let us denote the identity maps \(\mathrm{id} : V \rightarrow V\) by \(f_i\). Then a point in the flag variety is a collection of subspaces \(V_i \subset V\) such that \(\dim V_i = i\) and \(f_i Vi \subset V_{i+1}\). This construction can be generalized in a very straightforward way: namely, we allow the \(f_i\) to be arbitrary linear maps from \(V\) to \(V\). Let us denote the resulting variety by \(Fl^{f^\ast} (V)\), where \(f^\ast\) is the collection of maps \(f_i\) . The varieties \(Fl^{f^\ast} (V)\) can be naturally seen as degenerations of the classical flag variety \(\mathrm{SL}_{n+1}/B\) (which corresponds to \(f_i = id\)); we thus call \(Fl^{f^\ast} (V)\) the \(f^\ast\)-linear degenerate flag variety. Varying \(f^\ast\), one can glue the varieties \(Fl^{f^\ast} (V)\) together into a universal object \(Y\). By definition, there is a map \(\pi\) from Y to the parameter space \(R\) of all possible \(f^\ast\) (this is nothing but the product of \(n-1\) copies of the space of linear endomorphisms from \(V\) to \(V\)). We call \(Y\) the universal linear degeneration of the flag variety. The main goal of the paper is to study the variety \(Y\), the map \(\pi : Y \rightarrow R\) and the fibers of the map \(\pi\). In this paper, the authors obtain characterizations of flatness, irreducibility and normality of these degenerations via rank tuples for type \(A\) of degenerate flag varieties. Some of them are shown to be isomorphic to Schubert varieties and can be realized as highest weight orbits of partially degenerate Lie algebras, generalizing the corresponding results on degenerate flag varieties. To study normality, cell decompositions of quiver Grassmannians are constructed in a wider context of equioriented quivers of type \(A\).