On two notions of total positivity for partial flag varieties

Grassmannians, Schubert varieties, flag manifolds (14M15) Positive matrices and their generalizations; cones of matrices (15B48) Matroids in convex geometry (realizations in the context of convex polytopes, convexity in combinatorial structures, etc.) (52B40) Supersymmetric field theories in quantum mechanics (81T60)

arXiv classification

math.AG math.CO math.RT

Abstract: Given integers

1 l e k_{1} < c d o t s < k_{l} l e n - 1

, let

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}

denote the type

A

partial flag variety consisting of all chains of subspaces

(V_{k_{1}} s u b s e t c d o t s s u b s e t V_{k_{l}})

inside

m a t h b b R^{n}

, where each

V_{k}

has dimension

k

. Lusztig (1994, 1998) introduced the totally positive part

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{> 0}

as the subset of partial flags which can be represented by a totally positive

n i m e s n

matrix, and defined the totally nonnegative part

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{g e 0}

as the closure of

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{> 0}

. On the other hand, following Postnikov (2007), we define

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{D e l t a > 0}

and

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{D e l t a g e 0}

as the subsets of

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}

where all Pl"{u}cker coordinates are positive and nonnegative, respectively. It follows from the definitions that Lusztig's total positivity implies Pl"{u}cker positivity, and it is natural to ask when these two notions of positivity agree. Rietsch (2009) proved that they agree in the case of the Grassmannian

e x t {F l}_{k; n}

, and Chevalier (2011) showed that the two notions are distinct for

e x t {F l}_{1, 3; 4}

. We show that in general, the two notions agree if and only if

k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}

are consecutive integers. We give an elementary proof of this result (including for the case of Grassmannians) based on classical results in linear algebra and the theory of total positivity. We also show that the cell decomposition of

e x t {F l}_{k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}; n}^{g e 0}

coincides with its matroid decomposition if and only if

k_{1}, d o t s, k_{l}

are consecutive integers, which was previously only known for complete flag varieties, Grassmannians, and

e x t {F l}_{1, 3; 4}

. Finally, we determine which notions of positivity are compatible with a natural action of the cyclic group of order

n

that rotates the index set.

This page was built for publication: On two notions of total positivity for partial flag varieties

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6401848)