Cohomology ring of the flag variety vs Chow cohomology ring of the Gelfand-Zetlin toric variety (Q2154778)

For the complete flag variety \({\mathcal F}\ell_n\) whose points parametrize complete flags of vector subspaces in \({\mathbb C}^n\) and identified as the homogeneous space \(\text{GL}_n({\mathbb C})/B\), with \(B\) the Borel subgroup of upper triangular matrices, the classes of its Schubert subvarieties form a \({\mathbb Z}\)-basis of the cohomology \(H^*({\mathcal F}\ell_n,{\mathbb Z})\) and by a classical theorem of A. Borel, the ring \(H^*({\mathcal F}\ell_n,{\mathbb Z})\) is isomorphic to the polynomial algebra in \(n\) variables quotient the ideal generated by the non-constant symmetric polynomials. For an irreducible representation \(V_{\lambda}\) of \(\text{GL}_n({\mathbb C})\), with highest weight \(\lambda\), [\textit{I. M. Gel'fand} and \textit{M. L. Zetlin}, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR, n. Ser. 71, 825--828 (1950; Zbl 0037.15301)] construct a vector space basis \(B_{\lambda}\) of \(V_{\lambda}\) and describe the action of the Lie algebra \({\mathfrak gl}_n({\mathbb C})\) on the elements of this basis. Moreover, they show that the elements of \(B_{\lambda}\) are in one-to-one correspondence with the lattice points in the so-called Gel'fand-Zetlin convex polytope \(\Delta_{\lambda}\subseteq {\mathbb R}^N\), where \(N=n(n-1)/2\) is the dimension of the flag variety \({\mathcal F}\ell_n\), and therefore \(\dim(V_{\lambda})=\#(\Delta_{\lambda}\cap{\mathbb Z}^N)\). Gel'fand-Zetlin polytopes play a role for the flag variety similar to that of Newton polytopes for toric varieties, for example as in [\textit{A. Okounkov}, Am. Math. Soc. 181(35), 231--244 (1998; Zbl 0920.20032) or as in [\textit{K. Kaveh}, J. Lie Theory 21, No. 2, 263--283 (2011; Zbl 1222.14108)] where the author gives a description of \(H^*({\mathcal F} \ell_n,{\mathbb Q})\) in terms of volumes of Gel'fand-Zetlin polytopes that is similar to the Khovanskii-Pukhlikov description of the cohomology ring of a smooth projective toric variety in terms of volumes of Newton polytopes. The main result of the paper under review makes the connection between the geometry of the flag variety \({\mathcal F}\ell_n\) and the Gelf'and-Zetlin toric variety \(X_{\text{GZ}}\) associated to the polytope \(\Delta_{\lambda}\) stronger, comparing the cohomology ring \(H^*({\mathcal F}\ell_n,{\mathbb Q})\) of the flag variety to the Chow cohomology ring of the Gel'fand-Zetlin toric variety \(A^*(X_{\text{GZ}}, {\mathbb Q})\). The main theorem shows that \(H^*({\mathcal F}\ell_n,{\mathbb Q})\) is the Poincaré duality quotient of the subalgebra of \(A^*(X_{\text{GZ}}, {\mathbb Q})\) generated by degree \(1\) elements. Since the toric variety \(X_{\text{GZ}}\) is not smooth, the Chow cohomology group used here is the so-called \textit{operational Chow ring} of singular varieties, introduced in [\textit{W. Fulton} and \textit{R. MacPherson}, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 243, 165 p. (1981; Zbl 0467.55005)]. The main ingredients of the proof of the main theorem include a description of a polytope \(P\) whose normal fan is the Gel'fand-Zetlin fan associated to the Gel'fand-Zetlin polytope \(\Delta_{\lambda}\) as a Minkowski translation of \(\Delta_{\lambda}\), when \(\lambda\) is dominant weight. For \(n=3\), an explicit calculation in terms of the Minkowski weights of the fan associated to \(X_{\text{GZ}}\) shows that in general the subalgebra generated by degree \(1\) elements of \(A^*(X_{\text{GZ}},{\mathbb Q})\) does not have Poincaré duality.