Postnikov constructed a decomposition of a totally nonnegative Grassmannian into positroid cells. We provide combinatorial formulas that allow one to decide which cell a given point belongs to and to determine affine coordinates of the point within this cell. This simplifies Postnikov's description of the inverse boundary measurement map and generalizes formulas for the top cell given by Speyer and Williams. In addition, we identify a particular subset of Pluecker coordinates as a totally positive base for the set of non-vanishing Pluecker coordinates for a given positroid cell.
We provide a short proof of a classical result of Kasteleyn, and prove several variants thereof. One of these results has become key in the parametrization of positroid varieties, and thus deserves the short direct proof which we provide.
There is a cell decomposition of the nonnegative Grassmannian. For each cell, totally positive bases(TP-bases) is defined as the minimal set of Plücker variables such that all other nonzero Plücker variables in the cell can be expressed in those variables in a subtraction-free rational function. This is the generalization of the TP-bases defined for nonnegative part of $GL_k$ defined in \cite{FZ5}. For each cell, we have a $\LE$-diagram and a natural way to label the dots inside the diagram with Plücker variables. Those set of Plücker variables form a TP-bases of the cell. Using mutations comi…
Postnikov constructed a cellular decomposition of the totally nonnegative Grassmannians. The poset of cells can be described (in particular) via Grassmann necklaces. We study certain quiver Grassmannians for the cyclic quiver admitting a cellular decomposition, whose cells are naturally labeled by Grassmann necklaces. We show that the posets of cells coincide with the reversed cell posets of the cellular decomposition of the totally nonnegative Grassmannians. We investigate algebro-geometric and combinatorial properties of these quiver Grassmannians. In particular, we describe the irreducible …
The McMullen Correspondence gives a linear dependence between M-sequences of length |d/2|+1 and f-vectors of simplical d-polytopes. Denote the transfer matrix between g and f by M_d. Recently, Bjorner proved that any 2x2-minor of M_d is nonnegative and conjectured that the same would be true for arbitrary minors. In this paper we answer the question in the affirmative.
We prove that three spaces of importance in topological combinatorics are homeomorphic to closed balls: the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, the compactification of the space of electrical networks, and the cyclically symmetric amplituhedron.
Cactus networks were introduced by Lam as a generalization of planar electrical networks. He defined a map from these networks to the Grassmannian Gr($n+1,2n$) and showed that the image of this map, $\mathcal X_n$ lies inside the totally nonnegative part of this Grassmannian. In this paper, we show that $\mathcal X_n$ is exactly the elements of Gr($n+1,2n$) that are both totally nonnegative and isotropic for a particular skew-symmetric bilinear form. For certain classes of cactus networks, we also explicitly describe how to turn response matrices and effective resistance matrices into points o…
These are lecture notes intended to supplement my second lecture at the Current Developments in Mathematics conference in 2014. In the first half of article, we give an introduction to the totally nonnegative Grassmannian together with a survey of some more recent work. In the second half of the article, we give a definition of a Grassmann polytope motivated by work of physicists on the amplituhedron. We propose to use Schubert calculus and canonical bases to replace linear algebra and convexity in the theory of polytopes.
The space of mxp totally nonnegative real matrices has a stratification into totally nonnegative cells. The largest such cell is the space of totally positive matrices. There is a well-known criterion due to Gasca and Peña for testing a real matrix for total positivity. This criterion involves testing mp minors. In contrast, there is no known small set of minors for testing for total nonnegativity. In this paper, we show that for each of the totally nonnegative cells there is a test for membership which only involves mp minors, thus extending the Gasca and Peña result to all totally nonnegativ…
In this survey article, we describe recent work that connects three separate objects of interest: totally nonnegative matrices; quantum matrices; and matrix Poisson varieties.
We describe explicitly the admissible families of minors for the totally nonnegative cells of real matrices, that is, the families of minors that produce nonempty cells in the cell decompositions of spaces of totally nonnegative matrices introduced by A. Postnikov. In order to do this, we relate the totally nonnegative cells to torus orbits of symplectic leaves of the Poisson varieties of complex matrices. In particular, we describe the minors that vanish on a torus orbit of symplectic leaves, we prove that such families of minors are exactly the admissible families, and we show that the nonem…
Tropical algebraic geometry is the geometry of the tropical semiring (R, min, +). The theory of total positivity is a natural generalization of the study of matrices with all minors positive. In this paper we introduce the totally positive part of the tropicalization of an arbitrary affine variety, an object which has the structure of a polyhedral fan. We then investigate the case of the Grassmannian, denoting the resulting fan \Trop^+ Gr_{k,n}. We show that \Trop^+ Gr_{2,n} is the Stanley-Pitman fan, which is combinatorially the fan dual to the (type A_{n-3}) associahedron, and that \Trop^+ G…
We study totally nonnegative parts of critical varieties in the Grassmannian. We show that each totally nonnegative critical variety Crit$^{\ge0}_f$ is the image of an affine poset cyclohedron under a continuous map and use this map to define a boundary stratification of Crit$^{\ge0}_f$. For the case of the top-dimensional positroid cell, we show that the totally nonnegative critical variety Crit$^{\ge0}_{k,n}$ is homeomorphic to the second hypersimplex $Δ_{2,n}$.
We investigate the tropical analogues of totally positive and totally nonnegative matrices. These arise when considering the images by the nonarchimedean valuation of the corresponding classes of matrices over a real nonarchimedean valued field, like the field of real Puiseux series. We show that the nonarchimedean valuation sends the totally positive matrices precisely to the Monge matrices. This leads to explicit polyhedral representations of the tropical analogues of totally positive and totally nonnegative matrices. We also show that tropical totally nonnegative matrices with a finite perm…
We prove that the Grassmannian of totally isotropic $k$-spaces of the polar space associated to the unitary group $\mathsf{SU}_{2n}(\mathbb{F})$ ($n\in \mathbb{N}$) has generating rank ${2n\choose k}$ when $\mathbb{F}\ne \mathbb{F}_4$. We also reprove the main result of Blok [Blok2007], namely that the Grassmannian of totally isotropic $k$-spaces associated to the symplectic group $\mathsf{Sp}_{2n}(\mathbb{F})$ has generating rank ${2n\choose k}-{2n\choose k-2}$, when $\rm{Char}(\mathbb{F})\ne 2$.
Given a matrix $A$, let $A_{I,J}$ denote the submatrix of $A$ determined by rows $I$ and columns $J$. Fischer's Inequalities state that for each $n \times n$ Hermitian positive semidefinite matrix $A$, and each subset $I$ of $\{1,\dotsc,n\}$ and its complement $I^c$, we have $\det(A) \leq \det(A_{I,I})\det(A_{I^c,I^c})$. Barrett and Johnson (Linear Multilinear Algebra 34, 1993) extended these to state inequalities for sums of products of principal minors whose orders are given by nonincreasing integer sequences $(λ_1,\dotsc,λ_r)$, $(μ_1,\dotsc,μ_s)$ summing to $n$. Specifically, if $λ_1+\cdots…
We generalize the well known characterizations of totally nonnegative and oscillatory matrices, due to F.R.Gantmacher, M.G.Krein, A.Whitney, C.Loewner, M.Gasca, and J.M.Pena to the case of an arbitrary complex semisimple Lie group.
The totally nonnegative Grassmannian $\mathrm{Gr}(k,n)_{\geq0}$ is the subset of the real Grassmannian $\mathrm{Gr}(k,n)$ consisting of points with all nonnegative Plücker coordinates. The circular Bruhat order is a poset isomorphic to the face poset of A. Postnikov's (2005) positroid cell decomposition of $\mathrm{Gr}(k,n)_{\geq0}$. We provide a closed formula for the sum of its weighted chains in the spirit of J. Stembridge (2002).
The aim of this paper is to discuss a relationship between total positivity and planar directed networks. We show that the inverse boundary problem for these networks is naturally linked with the study of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian. We investigate its cell decomposition, where the cells are the totally nonnegative parts of the matroid strata. The boundary measurements of networks give parametrizations of the cells. We present several different combinatorial descriptions of the cells, study the partial order on the cells, and describe how they are glued to each other.
The nonnegative Grassmannian is a cell complex with rich geometric, algebraic, and combinatorial structures. Its study involves interesting combinatorial objects, such as positroids and plabic graphs. Remarkably, the same combinatorial structures appeared in many other areas of mathematics and physics, e.g., in the study of cluster algebras, scattering amplitudes, and solitons. We discuss new ways to think about these structures. In particular, we identify plabic graphs and more general Grassmannian graphs with polyhedral subdivisions induced by 2-dimensional projections of hypersimplices. Thi…
The KP equation is a nonlinear dispersive wave equation which provides an excellent model for resonant interactions of shallow-water waves. It is well known that regular soliton solutions of the KP equation may be constructed from points in the totally nonnegative Grassmannian Gr$(N,M)_{\geq 0}$. Kodama and Williams studied the asymptotic patterns (tropical limit) of KP solitons, called soliton graphs, and showed that they correspond to Postnikov's Le-diagrams. In this paper, we consider soliton graphs for the KP hierarchy, a family of commuting flows which are compatible with the KP equation.…
The totally nonnegative flag variety was introduced by Lusztig. It has enriched combinatorial, geometric, and Lie-theoretic structures. In this paper, we introduce a (new) $J$-total positivity on the full flag variety of an arbitrary Kac-Moody group, generalizing the (ordinary) total positivity. We show that the $J$-totally nonnegative flag variety has a cellular decomposition into totally positive $J$-Richardson varieties. Moreover, each totally positive $J$-Richardson variety admits a favorable decomposition, called a product structure. Combined with the generalized Poincare conjecture, we p…
We give a combinatorial proof that the product of a Schubert polynomial by a Schur polynomial is a nonnegative sum of Schubert polynomials. Our proof uses Assaf's theory of dual equivalence to show that a quasisymmetric function of Bergeron and Sottile is Schur-positive. By a geometric comparison theorem of Buch and Mihalcea, this implies the nonnegativity of Gromov-Witten invariants of the Grassmannian.
The goal of this paper is to clarify the connection between certain structures from the theory of totally nonnegative Grassmannians, quiver Grassmannians for cyclic quivers and the theory of local models of Shimura varieties. More precisely, we generalize the construction from our previous paper relating the combinatorics and geometry of quiver Grassmanians to that of the totally nonnegative Grassmannians. The varieties we are interested in serve as realizations of local models of Shimura varieties. We exploit quiver representation techniques to study the quiver Grassmannians of interest and, …
In this paper we explore the combinatorics of the non-negative part (G/P)+ of a cominuscule Grassmannian. For each such Grassmannian we define Le-diagrams -- certain fillings of generalized Young diagrams which are in bijection with the cells of (G/P)+. In the classical cases, we describe Le-diagrams explicitly in terms of pattern avoidance. We also define a game on diagrams, by which one can reduce an arbitrary diagram to a Le-diagram. We give enumerative results and relate our Le-diagrams to other combinatorial objects. Surprisingly, the totally non-negative cells in the open Schubert cell o…
By using totally isotropic subspaces in an orthogonal space Omega^{+}(2i,2), several infinite families of packings of 2^k-dimensional subspaces of real 2^i-dimensional space are constructed, some of which are shown to be optimal packings. A certain Clifford group underlies the construction and links this problem with Barnes-Wall lattices, Kerdock sets and quantum-error-correcting codes.
Amalgamation in the totally non-negative part of positroid varieties is equivalent to gluing copies of $Gr^{TP}(1,3)$ and $Gr^{TP}(2,3)$. Lam has proposed to represent amalgamation in positroid varieties by equivalence classes of relations on bipartite graphs and identify total non-negativity via edge signatures. Here we provide an explicit characterization of such signatures on the planar bicolored trivalent directed perfect networks in the disk parametrizing positroid cells $S_M^{TNN}$.To a graph $G$ representing $S_M^{TNN}$, we associate a geometric signature satisfying full rank condition …
Using the relationship between totally nonnegative matrices and directed acyclic weighted planar networks, we show that $2\times 2$ minors of minor matrices of totally nonnegative matrices are also nonnegative. We give a combinatorial interpretation for the minors of minor matrices in terms of the weights of families of paths in a network.
The algebra of quantum matrices of a given size supports a rational torus action by automorphisms. It follows from work of Letzter and the first named author that to understand the prime and primitive spectra of this algebra, the first step is to understand the prime ideals that are invariant under the torus action. In this paper, we prove that a family of quantum minors is the set of all quantum minors that belong to a given torus-invariant prime ideal of a quantum matrix algebra if and only if the corresponding family of minors defines a non-empty totally nonnegative cell in the space of tot…
The totally nonnegative Grassmannian is the set of k-dimensional subspaces V of R^n whose nonzero Pluecker coordinates all have the same sign. Gantmakher and Krein (1950) and Schoenberg and Whitney (1951) independently showed that V is totally nonnegative iff every vector in V, when viewed as a sequence of n numbers and ignoring any zeros, changes sign at most k-1 times. We generalize this result from the totally nonnegative Grassmannian to the entire Grassmannian, showing that if V is generic (i.e. has no zero Pluecker coordinates), then the vectors in V change sign at most m times iff certai…
In this paper we study the partially ordered set Q^J of cells in Rietsch's cell decomposition of the totally nonnegative part of an arbitrary flag variety P^J_{\geq 0}. Our goal is to understand the geometry of P^J_{\geq 0}: Lusztig has proved that this space is contractible, but it is unknown whether the closure of each cell is contractible, and whether P^J_{\geq 0} is homeomorphic to a ball. The order complex |Q^J| is a simplicial complex which can be thought of as a combinatorial approximation of P^J_{\geq 0}. Using combinatorial tools such as Bjorner's EL-labellings and Dyer's reflection o…
We give a proof of a result of D. Peterson's identifying the quantum cohomology ring of a Grassmannian with the reduced coordinate ring of a certain subvariety of $GL_n$. The totally positive part of this subvariety is then constructed and we give closed formulas for the values of the Schubert basis elements on the totally positive points. We then use the developed methods to give a new proof of a formula of Vafa and Intriligator and Bertram for the structure constants (Gromov--Witten invariants). Finally, we use the positivity of these Gromov--Witten invariants to prove certain inequalities f…
Alex Postnikov has given a combinatorially explicit cell decomposition of the totally nonnegative part of a Grassmannian, denoted Gr_{kn}+, and showed that this set of cells is isomorphic as a graded poset to many other interesting graded posets. The main result of this paper is an explicit generating function which enumerates the cells in Gr_{kn}+ according to their dimension. As a corollary, we give a new proof that the Euler characteristic of Gr_{kn}+ is 1. Additionally, we use our result to produce a new q-analog of the Eulerian numbers, which interpolates between the Eulerian numbers, the…
The standard parametrization of totally non-negative Grassmannians was obtained by A. Postnikov [45] introducing the boundary measurement map in terms of discrete path integration on planar bicolored (plabic) graphs in the disk. An alternative parametrization was proposed by T. Lam [38] introducing systems of relations on vectors on such graphs, depending on some signatures defined on edges. The problem of characterizing the signatures corresponding to the totally non-negative cells, was left open in [38]. In our paper we provide an explicit construction of such signatures, satisfying both the…
A plabic graph is a planar bicolored graph embedded in a disk, which satisfies some combinatorial conditions. Postnikov's boundary measurement map takes the space of positive edge weights of a plabic graph $G$ to a positroid cell in some totally nonnegative Grassmannian. In this note, we investigate plabic graphs which are symmetric about a line of reflection, up to reversing the colors of vertices. These symmetric plabic graphs arise naturally in the study of total positivity for the Lagrangian Grassmannian. We characterize various combinatorial objects associated with symmetric plabic graphs…
The stratification of the Grassmannian by positroid varieties has been the subject of extensive research. Positroid varieties are in bijection with a number of combinatorial objects, including $k$-Bruhat intervals and bounded affine permutations. In addition, Postnikov's boundary measurement map gives a family of parametrizations of each positroid variety; the domain of each parametrization is the space of edge weights of a weighted planar network. In this paper, we generalize the combinatorics of positroid varieties to the Lagrangian Grassmannian $Λ(2n)$, which is the type $C$ analog of the o…
We define and study the totally nonnegative part of the Chow quotient of the Grassmannian, or more simply the nonnegative configuration space. This space has a natural stratification by positive Chow cells, and we show that nonnegative configuration space is homeomorphic to a polytope as a stratified space. We establish bijections between positive Chow cells and the following sets: (a) regular subdivisions of the hypersimplex into positroid polytopes, (b) the set of cones in the positive tropical Grassmannian, and (c) the set of cones in the positive Dressian. Our work is motivated by connecti…
Le-diagrams are combinatorial objects that parametrize cells of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, called positroid cells, and each Le-diagram gives rise to a cluster algebra which is believed to be isomorphic to the coordinate ring of the corresponding positroid variety. We study quivers arising from these diagrams and show that they can be constructed from the well-behaved quivers associated to Grassmannians by deleting and merging certain vertices. Then, we prove that quivers coming from arbitrary Le-diagrams, and more generally reduced plabic graphs, admit a particular sequence of mutat…
The (tree) amplituhedron A(n,k,m) is the image in the Grassmannian Gr(k,k+m) of the totally nonnegative part of Gr(k,n), under a (map induced by a) linear map which is totally positive. It was introduced by Arkani-Hamed and Trnka in 2013 in order to give a geometric basis for the computation of scattering amplitudes in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. When k+m=n, the amplituhedron is isomorphic to the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, and when k=1, the amplituhedron is a cyclic polytope. While the case m=4 is most relevant to physics, the amplituhedron is an interesting mathematical objec…
We consider quantum Schubert cells in the quantum grassmannian and give a cell decomposition of the prime spectrum via the Schubert cells. As a consequence, we show that all primes are completely prime in the generic case where the deformation parameter q is not a root of unity. There is a torus H that acts naturally on the quantum grassmannian and the cell decomposition of the set of H-primes leads to a parameterisation of the H-spectrum via certain diagrams on partitions associated to the Schubert cells. Interestingly, the same parameterisation occurs for the non-negative cells in recent stu…
