Newton-Okounkov bodies of Bott-Samelson varieties and Grossberg-Karshon twisted cubes (Q737127)

The theory of Newton-Okounkov bodies (introduced in [\textit{R. Lazarsfeld} and \textit{M. Mustaţă}, Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 42, No. 5, 783--835 (2009; Zbl 1182.14004)] and [\textit{K. Kaveh} and \textit{A. G. Khovanskii}, Ann. Math. (2) 176, No. 2, 925--978 (2012; Zbl 1270.14022)]) -- roughly speaking -- associates to an \(n\)-dimensional complex algebraic variety (equipped with some auxiliary data) a convex body of dimension \(n\), called the \textit{Newton-Okounkov body}, which, in some cases, is a rational polytope. The main result of this paper is an explicit computation of a Newton-Okounkov body associated to a Bott-Samuelson variety under certain hypotheses (Theorem 3.4). This is a lattice polytope defined by an explicit list of inequalities; moreover, the valuation that the authors use to define this Newton-Okounkov body is different from that used previously in the literature ([\textit{D. Schmitz} and \textit{H. Seppänen}, ``Global Okounkov bodies for Bott-Samelson varieties'', \url{arXiv:1409.1857}], [\textit{N. Fujita}, ``Newton-Okounkov bodies for Bott-Samelson varieties and string polytopes for generalized Demazure modules'', \url{arXiv:1503.08916}], [\textit{K. Kaveh}, Duke Math. J. 164, No. 13, 2461--2506 (2015; Zbl 1428.14083)] and [\textit{V. Kiritchenko}, ``Divided difference operators on polytopes'', \url{arXiv:1307.7234}]). The polytope that arises is a special case of the Grossberg-Karshon twisted cubes, studied in [\textit{M. Grossberg} and \textit{Y. Karshon}, Duke Math. J. 76, No. 1, 23--58 (1994; Zbl 0826.22018)] in connection to character formulae for irreducible \(G\)-representations, and studied also in [\textit{M. Harada} and \textit{J. J. Yang}, J. Korean Math. Soc. 52, No. 4, 853--868 (2015; Zbl 1327.14226)] in relation to certain toric varieties associated to the Bott-Samuelson varieties. In particular, the Grossberg-Karshon twisted cubes that appear in the present paper are in fact untwisted (though possibly degenerate).