Degeneracy of triality-symmetric morphisms (Q442449)

The classical Giambelli-Thom-Porteous formula expresses the cohomology class of the \(r\)-th degeneracy locus of a morphism of two vector bundles \(\varphi: E\to F\) as a polynomial in the Chern classes of \(E\) and \(F\). However, this formula can be applied only in the case when \(\varphi\) is ``general enough'', i.e. its degeneracy loci have expected codimension. In particular this means that it does not work in some important cases when \(\varphi\) possesses an additional symmetry, for instance, if \(\varphi: E\to E^*\) is symmetric (\(\varphi=\varphi^*\)) or skew-symmetric (\(\varphi=-\varphi^*\)). In these cases, formulas for the degeneracy loci of \(\varphi\) were discovered by \textit{J. Harris} and \textit{L. W. Tu} [Topology 23, 71--84 (1984; Zbl 0534.55010)] and \textit{T. Józefiak, A. Lascoux} and \textit{P. Pragacz} [Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR, Ser. Mat. 45, 662--673 (1981; Zbl 0471.14028)]. All these formulas relate the degeneracy loci for \(\varphi\) to certain Schubert loci in classical, Lagrangian and orthogonal Grassmannians for the classical, symmetric and skew-symmetric cases, respectively. In this paper, the author defines a new class of morphisms, which he calls \textit{triality-symmetric}. These are morphisms \(\varphi: E\to \mathrm{End}(E)\oplus E^*\), where \(E\) is a rank 2 vector bundle, possessing a certain symmetry related to the \(S_3\) symmetry of the \(D_4\) Dynkin diagram. For these morphisms, an analogue of the Thom--Porteous formula is provided: the degeneracy loci of \(\varphi\) are expressed as polynomials in the Chern classes \(c_1(E)\) and \(c_2(E)\). In the above-mentioned sense the triality-symmetric morphisms are related to the ``\(G_2\) Grassmannian'', i.e. to the homogeneous space \(G_2/P\), where \(P\) is the maximal parabolic subgroup corresponding to the longest root. This is also related to the fact, observed previously by Landsberg and Manivel [Adv. Math. 201, 143--179 (2006, Zbl 0778.17001)] that for a rank 2 vector bundle \(E\) the bundle \(E\oplus\mathrm{End}(E)\oplus E^*\) has a canonical octonion algebra structure, just as there is a canonical symplectic structure on \(E\oplus E^*\).