The Deodhar decomposition of the Grassmannian and the regularity of KP solitons (Q2437434)

This paper is one of a series of works by the authors [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 108, No. 22, 8984--8989 (2011; Zbl 1256.37037), Invent. Math. 198, No. 3, 637--699 (2014; Zbl 1306.35109)]. For a given point \(A\) in the real Grassmannian, there is a soliton solution \(u_A(x, y, t)\) to the KP equation parameterized by \(A\). The contour plot of such a solution provides a tropical approximation to the solution by taking a large-scale limit of the variables \(x\), \(y\), and \(t\) for a fixed time \(t\). The tropical approximation of the contour plot is given as a graph which consists of piecewise linear segments and half lines. In this paper, the authors show that the graphs are represented by several decompositions of the Grassmannian. {\parindent=0.5cm\begin{itemize}\item[1)] The positroid stratification of the real Grassmannian characterizes the unbounded line-solitons in the contour plots at \(y \gg 0\) and \(y \ll 0\). \item[2)] The Deodhar decomposition of the Grassmannian -- refinement of the positroid stratification -- characterizes the graphs at \(t\ll 0\). \item[3)] By indexing the components of the Deodhar decomposition of the Grassmannian in terms of Young tableaux which the authors call Go-diagrams, the Go-diagrams directly correspond to the graphs of \(t\ll0\) via generalized plabic graphs. \end{itemize}} Using these results, the authors show that a soliton solution \(u_A(x, y, t)\) is regular for all times \(t\) if and only if \(A\) comes from the totally non-negative part of the Grassmannian.