Triangulations of Grassmannians and flag manifolds (Q6174792)

The oriented matroid Grassmannian \(\mathrm{MacP}(k,n)\), also called the MacPhersonian, was introduced by \textit{R. MacPherson} [in: Topological methods in modern mathematics. Proceedings of a symposium in honor of John Milnor's sixtieth birthday, held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, June 14-June 21, 1991. Houston, TX: Publish or Perish, Inc. 203--221 (1993; Zbl 0812.57019)] as a combinatorial analogue for the real Grassmann manifold \(\mathrm{Gr}(k,\mathbb{R}^n)\) of \(k\)-dimensional subspaces in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The MacPhersonian \(\mathrm{MacP}(k,n)\) is the order complex of the partially ordered set of all oriented matroids of rank \(k\) on a labelled set of \(n\) elements, ordered by weak maps. MacPherson also conjectured that, in the case \(k=2\), the geometric realization \(\|\mathrm{MacP}(2,n)\|\) is homeomorphic to \(\mathrm{Gr}(2,\mathbb{R}^n)\), and it was proved soon after that these two are homotopy equivalent. In this paper the author proves this conjecture by MacPherson, and moreover, he shows that the flag manifold \(\mathrm{Gr}(1,2,\mathbb{R}^n)\) is homeomorphic to the geometric realization of its combinatorial counterpart \(\|\mathrm{MacP}(1,2,n)\|\). The method of the proof relies on the realizability of rank \(2\) oriented matroids (that is, the fact that any such matroid is induced by a hyperplane arrangement in \(\mathbb{R}^2\)), and it is pointed out in the paper that this is the reason why this argument does not go through in the cases \(k\ge3\). The author considers the canonical map \(\mu:\mathrm{Gr}(2,\mathbb{R}^n)\rightarrow\mathrm{MacP}(2,n)\) (which maps a \(2\)-dimensional plane to the rank \(2\) oriented matroid it determines) and shows that the partition \(\{\mu^{-1}(M)\mid M\in\mathrm{MacP}(2,n)\}\) is a regular cell decomposition of \(\mathrm{Gr}(2,\mathbb{R}^n)\). The analogous arguments are used to prove that \(\mathrm{Gr}(1,2,\mathbb{R}^n)\cong\|\mathrm{MacP}(1,2,n)\|\).