A partial Horn recursion in the cohomology of flag varieties

Horn recursion is a term used to describe when non-vanishing products of Schubert classes in the cohomology of complex flag varieties are characterized by inequalities parameterized by similar non-vanishing products in the cohomology of “smaller” flag varieties. We consider the type A partial flag variety and find that its cohomology exhibits a Horn recursion on a certain deformation of the cup product defined by Belkale and Kumar (Invent. Math. 166:185–228, 2006). We also show that if a product of Schubert classes is non-vanishing on this deformation, then the associated structure constant can be written in terms of structure constants coming from induced Grassmannians.     

A combinatorial rule for (co)minuscule Schubert calculus

We prove a root system uniform, concise combinatorial rule for Schubert calculus of minuscule and cominuscule flag manifolds G/P (the latter are also known as compact Hermitian symmetric spaces). We connect this geometry to the poset combinatorics of Proctor, thereby giving a generalization of Schützenberger's jeu de taquin formulation of the Littlewood-Richardson rule that computes the intersection numbers of Grassmannian Schubert varieties. Our proof introduces cominuscule recursions, a general technique to relate the numbers for different Lie types.     

Root games on Grassmannians

We recall the root game, introduced in [8], which gives a fairly powerful sufficient condition for non-vanishing of Schubert calculus on a generalised flag manifold G/B. We show that it gives a necessary and sufficient rule for non-vanishing of Schubert calculus on Grassmannians. In particular, a Littlewood-Richardson number is non-zero if and only if it is possible to win the corresponding root game. More generally, the rule can be used to determine whether or not a product of several Schubert classes on Gr _l (ℂ ⁿ ) is non-zero in a manifestly symmetric way. Finally, we give a geometric interpretation of root games for Grassmannian Schubert problems. Research partially supported by an NSERC scholarship.     

Bioriented flags and resolutions of Schubert varieties

We use incidence relations running in two directions in order to construct a Kempf–Laksov type resolution for any Schubert variety of the complete flag manifold but also an embedded resolution for any Schubert variety in the Grassmannian. These constructions are alternatives to the celebrated Bott–Samelson resolutions. The second process led to the introduction of W-flag varieties, algebro-geometric objects that interpolate between the standard flag manifolds and products of Grassmannians, but which are singular in general. The surprising simple desingularization of a particular such type of variety produces an embedded resolution of the Schubert variety within the Grassmannian.     

On some properties of symplectic Grothendieck polynomials

Grothendieck polynomials, introduced by Lascoux and Schützenberger, are certain K-theory representatives for Schubert varieties. Symplectic Grothendieck polynomials, described more recently by Wyser and Yong, represent the K-theory classes of orbit closures for the complex symplectic group acting on the complete flag variety. We prove a transition formula for symplectic Grothendieck polynomials and study their stable limits. We show that each of the K-theoretic Schur P-functions of Ikeda and Naruse arises from a limiting procedure applied to symplectic Grothendieck polynomials representing certain “Grassmannian” orbit closures.     

Factorisation of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients

The hive model is used to show that the saturation of any essential Horn inequality leads to the factorisation of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. The proof is based on the use of combinatorial objects known as puzzles. These are shown not only to account for the origin of Horn inequalities, but also to determine the constraints on hives that lead to factorisation. Defining a primitive Littlewood-Richardson coefficient to be one for which all essential Horn inequalities are strict, it is shown that every Littlewood-Richardson coefficient can be expressed as a product of primitive coefficients. Precisely the same result is shown to apply to the polynomials defined by stretched Littlewood-Richardson coefficients.     

Quadratic degenerations of odd-orthogonal Schubert varieties

This paper is the second in a series leading to a type B_n geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule. The rule will give an interpretation of the B_n Littlewood-Richardson numbers as an intersection of two odd-orthogonal Schubert varieties and will consider a sequence of linear and quadratic deformations of the intersection into a union of odd-orthogonal Schubert varieties. This paper describes the setup for the rule and specifically addresses results for quadratic deformations, including a proof that at each quadratic degeneration, the results occur with multiplicity one. This work is strongly influenced by Vakil’s [14].     

Rigidity of Schubert classes in orthogonal Grassmannians

A Schubert class σ in the cohomology of a homogeneous variety X is called rigid if the only projective subvarieties of X representing σ are Schubert varieties. A Schubert class σ is called multi rigid if the only projective subvarieties representing positive integral multiples of σ are unions of Schubert varieties. In this paper, we discuss the rigidity and multi rigidity of Schubert classes in orthogonal Grassmannians. For a large set of non-rigid classes, we provide explicit deformations of Schubert varieties using combinatorially defined varieties called restriction varieties. We characterize rigid and multi rigid Schubert classes of Grassmannian and quadric type. We also characterize all the rigid classes in OG(2, n) if n > 8.     

Restriction varieties and geometric branching rules

This paper develops a new method for studying the cohomology of orthogonal flag varieties. Restriction varieties are subvarieties of orthogonal flag varieties defined by rank conditions with respect to (not necessarily isotropic) flags. They interpolate between Schubert varieties in orthogonal flag varieties and the restrictions of general Schubert varieties in ordinary flag varieties. We give a positive, geometric rule for calculating their cohomology classes, obtaining a branching rule for Schubert calculus for the inclusion of the orthogonal flag varieties in Type A flag varieties. Our rule, in addition to being an essential step in finding a Littlewood–Richardson rule, has applications to computing the moment polytopes of the inclusion of SO(n) in SU(n), the asymptotic of the restrictions of representations of SL(n) to SO(n) and the classes of the moduli spaces of rank two vector bundles with fixed odd determinant on hyperelliptic curves. Furthermore, for odd orthogonal flag varieties, we obtain an algorithm for expressing a Schubert cycle in terms of restrictions of Schubert cycles of Type A flag varieties, thereby giving a geometric (though not positive) algorithm for multiplying any two Schubert cycles.     

Equivariant Pieri Rule for the homology of the affine Grassmannian

An explicit rule is given for the product of the degree two class with an arbitrary Schubert class in the torus-equivariant homology of the affine Grassmannian. In addition a Pieri rule (the Schubert expansion of the product of a special Schubert class with an arbitrary one) is established for the equivariant homology of the affine Grassmannians of SL _n and a similar formula is conjectured for Sp _2n and SO _2n+1. For SL _n the formula is explicit and positive. By a theorem of Peterson these compute certain products of Schubert classes in the torus-equivariant quantum cohomology of flag varieties. The SL _n Pieri rule is used in our recent definition of k-double Schur functions and affine double Schur functions.     

Double Schubert polynomials for the classical groups

For each infinite series of the classical Lie groups of type B, C or D, we construct a family of polynomials parametrized by the elements of the corresponding Weyl group of infinite rank. These polynomials represent the Schubert classes in the equivariant cohomology of the appropriate flag variety. They satisfy a stability property, and are a natural extension of the (single) Schubert polynomials of Billey and Haiman, which represent non-equivariant Schubert classes. They are also positive in a certain sense, and when indexed by maximal Grassmannian elements, or by the longest element in a finite Weyl group, these polynomials can be expressed in terms of the factorial analogues of Schur's Q- or P-functions defined earlier by Ivanov.     

Growth diagrams for the Schubert multiplication

We present a partial generalization of the classical Littlewood-Richardson rule (in its version based on Schützenberger's jeu de taquin) to Schubert calculus on flag varieties. More precisely, we describe certain structure constants expressing the product of a Schubert and a Schur polynomial. We use a generalization of Fomin's growth diagrams (for chains in Young's lattice of partitions) to chains of permutations in the so-called k-Bruhat order. Our work is based on the recent thesis of Beligan, in which he generalizes the classical plactic structure on words to chains in certain intervals in k-Bruhat order. Potential applications of our work include the generalization of the S₃-symmetric Littlewood-Richardson rule due to Thomas and Yong, which is based on Fomin's growth diagrams.     

Schubert polynomials and classes of Hessenberg varieties

Regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties are a family of subvarieties of the flag variety that arise in number theory, numerical analysis, representation theory, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics. We give a “Giambelli formula” expressing the classes of regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties in terms of Chern classes. In fact, we show that the cohomology class of each regular semisimple Hessenberg variety is the specialization of a certain double Schubert polynomial, giving a natural geometric interpretation to such specializations. We also decompose such classes in terms of the Schubert basis for the cohomology ring of the flag variety. The coefficients obtained are nonnegative, and we give closed combinatorial formulas for the coefficients in many cases. We introduce a closely related family of schemes called regular nilpotent Hessenberg schemes, and use our results to determine when such schemes are reduced.     

Intersections of Schubert varieties and eigenvalue inequalities in an arbitrary finite factor

The intersection ring of a complex Grassmann manifold is generated by Schubert varieties, and its structure is governed by the Littlewood-Richardson rule. Given three Schubert varieties S₁, S₂, S₃ with intersection number equal to one, we show how to construct an explicit element in their intersection. This element is obtained generically as the result of a sequence of lattice operations on the spaces of the corresponding flags, and is therefore well defined over an arbitrary field of scalars. Moreover, this result also applies to appropriately defined analogues of Schubert varieties in the Grassmann manifolds associated with a finite von Neumann algebra. The arguments require the combinatorial structure of honeycombs, particularly the structure of the rigid extremal honeycombs. It is known that the eigenvalue distributions of self-adjoint elements a,b,c with a+b+c=0 in the factor Rω are characterized by a system of inequalities analogous to the classical Horn inequalities of linear algebra. We prove that these inequalities are in fact true for elements of an arbitrary finite factor. In particular, if x,y,z are self-adjoint elements of such a factor and x+y+z=0, then there exist self-adjoint a,b,c∈Rω such that a+b+c=0 and a (respectively, b,c) has the same eigenvalue distribution as x (respectively, y,z). A (‘complete’) matricial form of this result is known to imply an affirmative answer to an embedding question formulated by Connes. The critical point in the proof of this result is the production of elements in the intersection of three Schubert varieties. When the factor under consideration is the algebra of n×n complex matrices, our arguments provide new and elementary proofs of the Horn inequalities, which do not require knowledge of the structure of the cohomology of the Grassmann manifolds.     

Chains in the Bruhat order

We study a family of polynomials whose values express degrees of Schubert varieties in the generalized complex flag manifold G/B. The polynomials are given by weighted sums over saturated chains in the Bruhat order. We derive several explicit formulas for these polynomials, and investigate their relations with Schubert polynomials, harmonic polynomials, Demazure characters, and generalized Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. In the second half of the paper, we study the classical flag manifold and discuss related combinatorial objects: flagged Schur polynomials, 312-avoiding permutations, generalized Gelfand-Tsetlin polytopes, the inverse Schubert-Kostka matrix, parking functions, and binary trees. A.P. was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant DMS-0201494 and by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation research fellowship. R.S. was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant DMS-9988459.     

Cohomology of line bundles on Schubert varieties: The rank two case

In this paper we describe vanishing and non-vanishing of cohomology of “most” line bundles over Schubert subvarieties of flag varieties for rank 2 semisimple algebraic groups.     

Flexibility of Schubert classes

In this note, we discuss the flexibility of Schubert classes in homogeneous varieties. We give several constructions for representing multiples of a Schubert class by irreducible subvarieties. We sharpen [22, Theorem 3.1] by proving that every positive multiple of an obstructed class in a cominuscule homogeneous variety can be represented by an irreducible subvariety.     

Quantum generalization of the Horn conjecture

The following results are presented in this paper:

(1) a quantum (multiplicative) generalization of the Horn conjecture which gives a recursive characterization of the possible eigenvalues of a product of unitary matrices,

(2) the saturation conjecture for the fusion structure coefficients for SL,

(3) transversality statements for quantum Schubert calculus in any characteristic for the ordinary Grassmannians,

(4) determination of the smallest power of in an arbitrary (small quantum) product of Schubert varieties in an ordinary Grassmannian.

     

Skew Schubert polynomials

We define skew Schubert polynomials to be normal form (polynomial) representatives of certain classes in the cohomology of a flag manifold. We show that this definition extends a recent construction of Schubert polynomials due to Bergeron and Sottile in terms of certain increasing labeled chains in Bruhat order of the symmetric group. These skew Schubert polynomials expand in the basis of Schubert polynomials with nonnegative integer coefficients that are precisely the structure constants of the cohomology of the complex flag variety with respect to its basis of Schubert classes. We rederive the construction of Bergeron and Sottile in a purely combinatorial way, relating it to the construction of Schubert polynomials in terms of rc-graphs.

     

Equivariant quantum Schubert calculus

We study the T-equivariant quantum cohomology of the Grassmannian. We prove the vanishing of a certain class of equivariant quantum Littlewood-Richardson coefficients, which implies an equivariant quantum Pieri rule. As in the equivariant case, this implies an algorithm to compute the equivariant quantum Littlewood-Richardson coefficients.