Postnikov gave a combinatorial description of the cells in a totally-nonnegative Grassmannian. These cells correspond to a special class of matroids called positroid. We prove his conjecture that a positroid is exactly an intersection of permuted Schubert matroids. This leads to a nice combinatorial description of positroids that is easily computable.
A positroid is the matroid of a matrix whose maximal minors are all nonnegative. Given a permutation $w$ in $S_n$, the matroid of a generic $n \times n$ matrix whose non-zero entries in row $i$ lie in columns $w(i)$ through $n+i$ is an example of a positroid. We enumerate the bases of such a positroid as a sum of certain products of Catalan numbers, each term indexed by the $123$-avoiding permutations above $w$ in Bruhat order. We also give a similar sum formula for their Tutte polynomials. These are both avatars of a structural result writing such a positroid as a disjoint union of matroids, …
Flag matroids are a rich family of Coxeter matroids that can be characterized using pairs of matroids that form a quotient. We consider a class of matroids called positroids, introduced by Postnikov, and utilize their combinatorial representations to explore characterizations of flag positroids. Given a uniform positroid, we give a purely combinatorial characterization of a family of positroids that form quotients with it. We state this in terms of their associated decorated permutations. In proving our characterization we also fully describe the circuits of this family.
A positroid is a special case of a realizable matroid that arose from the study of the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian by Postnikov. In this paper, we study the facets of its matroid polytope and the independent set polytope. This allows one to describe the bases and independent sets directly from the decorated permutation, bypassing the use of the Grassmann necklace. We also describe a criterion for determining whether a given cyclic interval is a flat or not using the decorated permutation, then show how it applies to checking the concordancy of positroids.
The Rayleigh property is a negative correlation property of electrical networks, which was generalized to matroids by Choe and Wagner. We prove that positroids, a class of matroid introduced by Postnikov which have seen many recent applications in both math and physics, have the Rayleigh property.
A well-known conjecture of Stanley is that the h-vector of any matroid is a pure O-sequence. There have been numerous papers with partial progress on this conjecture, but it is still wide open. Positroids are special class of linear matroids that play a crucial role in the field of total positivity. In this short note, we prove that Stanley's conjecture holds for positroids.
A positroid is the matroid of a real matrix with nonnegative maximal minors, a positroid variety is the closure of the locus of points in a complex Grassmannian whose matroid is a fixed positroid, and a positroid class is the cohomology class Poincaré dual to a positroid variety. We define a family of representations of general linear groups whose characters are symmetric polynomials representing positroid classes. These representations are certain diagram Schur modules in the sense of James and Peel. This gives a new algebraic interpretation of the Schubert structure constants for the product…
A positroid is a matroid defined by Postnikov to study the cells in the non-negative part of the Grassmannian. They are in bijection with decorated permutations. We show a way to explain contraction and restriction of positroids in terms of decorated permutations.
In this paper, we give a formula for the number of lattice points in the dilations of Schubert matroid polytopes. As applications, we obtain the Ehrhart polynomials of uniform and minimal matroids as special cases, and give a recursive formula for the Ehrhart polynomials of $(a,b)$-Catalan matroids. Ferroni showed that uniform and minimal matroids are Ehrhart positive. We show that all sparse paving Schubert matroids are Ehrhart positive and their Ehrhart polynomials are coefficient-wisely bounded by those of minimal and uniform matroids. This confirms a conjecture of Ferroni for the case of s…
A positroid is a special case of a realizable matroid, that arose from the study of totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian by Postnikov. Postnikov demonstrated that positroids are in bijection with certain interesting classes of combinatorial objects, such as Grassmann necklaces and decorated permutations. The bases of a positroid can be described directly in terms of the Grassmann necklace and decorated permutation. In this paper, we show that the rank of an arbitrary set in a positroid can be computed directly from the associated decorated permutation using non-crossing partitions.
Wilson loop diagrams are an important tool in studying scattering amplitudes of SYM $N=4$ theory and are known by previous work to be associated to positroids. We characterize the conditions under which two Wilson loop diagrams give the same positroid, prove that an important subclass of subdiagrams (exact subdiagrams) correspond to uniform matroids, and enumerate the number of different Wilson loop diagrams that correspond to each positroid cell. We also give a correspondence between those positroids which can arise from Wilson loop diagrams and directions in associahedra.
The Catalan numbers form a sequence that counts over 200 combinatorial objects. A remarkable property of the Catalan numbers, which extends to these objects, is its recursive definition; that is, we can determine the $n^{th}$ object from previous ones. Matroids are combinatorial objects that generalize the notion of linear independence and have connections with other fields of mathematics. A family of matroids, called unit interval positroids (UIP), are Catalan objects induced by the antiadjacency matrices of unit interval orders. Associated to each UIP is the set of externally ordered bases, …
Vakil studied the intersection theory of Schubert varieties in the Grassmannian in a very direct way: he degenerated the intersection of a Schubert variety X_mu and opposite Schubert variety X^nu to a union {X^lambda}, with repetition. This degeneration proceeds in stages, and along the way he met a collection of more complicated subvarieties, which he identified as the closures of certain locally closed sets. We show that Vakil's varieties are _positroid varieties_, which in particular shows they are normal, Cohen-Macaulay, have rational singularities, and are defined by the vanishing of Plüc…
A basis shape locus takes as input data a zero/nonzero pattern in an $n \times k$ matrix, which is equivalent to a presentation of a transversal matroid. The locus is defined as the set of points in the Grassmannian of $k$ planes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ which are the row space of a matrix with the prescribed zero/nonzero pattern. We show that this locus depends only on the transversal matroid, not on the specific presentation. When a transversal matroid is a positroid, the closure of its basis shape locus is the associated positroid variety. We give a sufficient, and conjecturally necessary, conditi…
Parametrization of positroid cells by Dubrovin-Natanzon Cartier divisors on maximal Mumford curves
Università di Bologna(博洛尼亚大学);INFN Sezione di Bologna(意大利国家核物理研究所博洛尼部分所);Steklov International Mathematical Center(斯特克洛夫国际数学中心);Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation(俄罗斯联邦科学与高等教育部);Steklov Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences(俄罗斯科学院斯特克洛夫数学研究所);L.D. Landau Institute for theoretical Physics, of Russian Academy of Sciences(俄罗斯科学院列夫·朗道理论物理研究所);Lomonosov Moscow State University(莫斯科罗蒙诺索夫国立大学)