Bott-Samelson Varieties, Subword Complexes and Brick Polytopes

Escobar, Laura

Discrete mathematics & theoretical computer science, DMTCS Proceedings vol. AT, 26th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2014), DMTCS Proceedings vol. AT, 26th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics (FPSAC 2014) (2014).

Résumé

Bott-Samelson varieties factor the flag variety $G/B$ into a product of $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^1$'s with a map into $G/B$. These varieties are mostly studied in the case in which the map into $G/B$ is birational; however in this paper we study fibers of this map when it is not birational. We will see that in some cases this fiber is a toric variety. In order to do so we use the moment map of a Bott-Samelson variety to translate this problem into a purely combinatorial one in terms of a subword complex. These simplicial complexes, defined by Knutson and Miller, encode a lot of information about reduced words in a Coxeter system. Pilaud and Stump realized certain subword complexes as the dual to the boundary of a polytope which generalizes the brick polytope defined by Pilaud and Santos. For a nice family of words, the brick polytope is the generalized associahedron realized by Hohlweg and Lange. These stories connect in a nice way: the moment polytope of a fiber of the Bott-Samelson map is the Brick polytope. In particular, we give a nice description of the toric variety of the associahedron.

Détail

DOI : 10.46298/dmtcs.2448