We study the dimensions of secant varieties of the Grassmannian of Lagrangian subspaces in a symplectic vector space. We calculate these dimensions for third and fourth secant varieties. Our result is obtained by providing a normal form for four general points on such a Grassmannian and by explicitly calculating the tangent spaces at these four points.
For an irreducible projective variety X, we study the family of h-planes contained in the secant variety Sec_k(X), for 0<h<k. These families have an expected dimension and we study varieties for which the expected dimension is not attained; for these varieties, making general consecutive projections to lower dimensional spaces, we do not get the expected singularities. In particular, we examine the family G of lines sitting in 3-secant planes to a surface S. We show that the actual dimension of G is equal to the expected dimension unless S is a cone or a rational normal scroll of degree 4 in P…
In this paper we discuss the dimensions of the (higher) secant varieties to the Grassmann varieties, embedded via the Plucker embeddings. We use Terracini's Lemma and the duality in the exterior algebra of a finite dimensional vector space to translate the problem into that of finding the dimension of a graded piece of a " fat" ideal in the exterior algebra. Among other things, our methods prove that (apart from the chordal varieties to the Grassmannians of lines) all the chordal varieties of Grassmannians have the expected dimension. We also discuss some Grassmannians with deficient secant va…
We formulate the Secant Conjecture, which is a generalization of the Shapiro Conjecture for Grassmannians. It asserts that an intersection of Schubert varieties in a Grassmannian is transverse with all points real, if the flags defining the Schubert varieties are secant along disjoint intervals of a rational normal curve. We present theoretical evidence for it as well as computational evidence obtained in over one terahertz-year of computing, and we discuss some phenomena we observed in our data.
In this paper we study the higher secant varieties of Grassmann varieties in relation to Waring's problem for alternating tensors and to Alexander-Hirschowitz theorem. We show how to identify defective higher secant varieties of Grassmannians using a probabilistic method involving Terracini's Lemma, and we describe an algorithm which can compute, by numerical methods, dim(G(k,n)^{s}) for n<=14. Our main result is that, except for Grassmannians of lines, if n<=14 and k<=(n-1)/2 (if n=14 we have studied the case k<=5) there are only the four known defective cases: G(2,6)^{3}, G(3,7)^{3}, G(3,7)^…
We prove that the generic element of the fifth secant variety $σ_5(Gr(\mathbb{P}^2,\mathbb{P}^9)) \subset \mathbb{P}(\bigwedge^3 \mathbb{C}^{10})$ of the Grassmannian of planes of $\mathbb{P}^9$ has exactly two decompositions as a sum of five projective classes of decomposable skew-symmetric tensors. {We show that this, {together with $Gr(\mathbb{P}^3, \mathbb{P}^8)$, is the only non-identifiable case} among the non-defective secant varieties $σ_s(Gr(\mathbb{P}^k, \mathbb{P}^n))$ for any $n<14$. In the same range for $n$, we classify all the weakly defective and all tangentially weakly defecti…
Every Grassmannian, in its Plücker embedding, is defined by quadratic polynomials. We prove a vast, qualitative, generalisation of this fact to what we call Plücker varieties. A Plücker variety is in fact a family of varieties in exterior powers of vector spaces that, like the Grassmannian, is functorial in the vector space and behaves well under duals. A special case of our result says that for each fixed natural number k, the k-th secant variety of any Plücker-embedded Grassmannian is defined in bounded degree independent of the Grassmannian. Our approach is to take the limit of a Plücker va…
Over a field of characteristic $0$, we prove that for each $r \geq 0$ there exists a constant $C(r)$ so that the prime ideal of the $r$th secant variety of any Plücker-embedded Grassmannian ${\bf Gr}(d,n)$ is generated by polynomials of degree at most $C(r)$, where $C(r)$ is independent of $d$ and $n$. This bounded generation ultimately reduces to proving a poset is noetherian, we develop a new method to do this. We then translate the structure we develop to the language of functor categories to prove the $i$th syzygy module of the coordinate ring of the $r$th secant variety of any Plücker-emb…
We study the projective behavior, mainly with respect to osculating spaces and secant varieties, of Lagrangian Grassmannians and Spinor varieties. We prove that these varieties have osculating dimension smaller than expected. Furthermore, we give numerical conditions ensuring the non secant defectivity of Lagrangian Grassmannians in their Plücker embedding and of Spinor varieties in both their Plücker and Spinor embeddings.
We study the geometry of the secant and tangential variety of a cominuscule and minuscule variety, e.g. a Grassmannian or a spinor variety. Using methods inspired by statistics we provide an explicit local isomorphism with a product of an affine space with a variety which is the Zariski closure of the image of a map defined by generalized determinants. In particular, equations of the secant or tangential variety correspond to relations among generalized determinants. We also provide a representation theoretic decomposition of cubics in the ideal of the secant variety of any Grassmannian.
We determine normal forms and ranks of tensors of border rank at most three. We present a differential-geometric analysis of limits of secant planes in a more general context. In particular there are at most four types of points on limiting trisecant planes for cominuscule varieties such as Grassmannians. We also show the singular locus of the first two secant varieties of all triple Segre products has codimension at least two.
We introduce a method to produce bounds for the non secant defectivity of an arbitrary irreducible projective variety, once we know how its osculating spaces behave in families and when the linear projections from them are generically finite. Then we analyze the relative dimension of osculating projections of Grassmannians, and as an application of our techniques we prove that asymptotically the Grassmannian $\mathbb{G}(r,n)$, parametrizing $r$-planes in $\mathbb{P}^n$, is not $h$-defective for $h\leq (\frac{n+1}{r+1})^{\lfloor\log_2(r)\rfloor}$. This bound improves the previous one $h\leq \fr…
The Drinfel'd Lagrangian Grassmannian compactifies the space of algebraic maps of fixed degree from the projective line into the Lagrangian Grassmannian. It has a natural projective embedding arising from the canonical embedding of the Lagrangian Grassmannian. We show that the defining ideal of any Schubert subvariety of the Drinfel'd Lagrangian Grassmannian is generated by polynomials which give a straightening law on an ordered set. Consequentially, any such subvariety is Cohen-Macaulay and Koszul. The Hilbert function is computed from the straightening law, leading to a new derivation of ce…
A congruence is a surface in the Grassmannian $\mathrm{Gr}(1,\mathbb{P}^3)$ of lines in projective $3$-space. To a space curve $C$, we associate the Chow hypersurface in $\mathrm{Gr}(1,\mathbb{P}^3)$ consisting of all lines which intersect $C$. We compute the singular locus of this hypersurface, which contains the congruence of all secants to $C$. A surface $S$ in $\mathbb{P}^3$ defines the Hurwitz hypersurface in $\mathrm{Gr}(1,\mathbb{P}^3)$ of all lines which are tangent to $S$. We show that its singular locus has two components for general enough $S$: the congruence of bitangents and the c…
In the first part of the thesis, we study a classical invariant of projective varieties, the secant defectivity. The second part is devoted to modern algebraic geometry, we study the birational geometry of blow-ups of Grassmannians at points.
The geometry of Sp(3)/U(3) as a subvariety of Gr(3,6) is explored to explain several examples given by Mukai of non-abelian Brill-Noether loci, and to give some new examples. These examples identify Brill-Noether loci of vector bundles on linear sections of the Lagrangian Grassmannian Sp(3)/U(3) with orthogonal linear sections of the dual variety and vice versa. A main technical result of independent interest is the fact that any nodal hyperplane section of the Lagrangian Grassmannian projected from the node is a linear section of the Grassmannian Gr(2,6).
Let V be a symplectic vector space and LG be the Lagrangian Grassmannian which parametrizes maximal isotropic subspaces in V. We give a presentation for the (small) quantum cohomology ring QH^*(LG) and show that its multiplicative structure is determined by the ring of (Q^~)-polynomials. We formulate a "quantum Schubert calculus" which includes quantum Pieri and Giambelli formulas, as well as algorithms for computing the structure constants appearing in the quantum product of Schubert classes.
In [Rie08], the second author defined a Landau-Ginzburg model for homogeneous spaces G/P, as a regular function on an affine subvariety of the Langlands dual group. In this paper, we reformulate this LG-model (X^,W_t) in the case of the Lagrangian Grassmannian LG(m) as a rational function on a Langlands dual orthogonal Grassmannian, in the spirit of work by R. Marsh and the second author [MR12] for type A Grassmannians. This LG model has some very interesting features, which are not visible in the type A case, to do with the non-triviality of Langlands duality. We also formulate a conjecture r…
A wonderful compactification of an orbit under the action of a semi-simple and simply connected group is a smooth projective variety containing the orbit as a dense open subset, and where the added boundary divisor is simple normal crossing. We construct the wonderful compactification of the space of symmetric and symplectic matrices, and investigate its geometry. As an application, we describe the birational geometry of the Kontsevich spaces parametrizing conics in Lagrangian Grassmannians.
Let Gr(2, E) be the Grassmann bundle of two-planes associated to a general bundle E over a curve X. We prove that an embedding of Gr(2, E) by a certain twist of the relative Plücker map is not secant defective. This yields a new and more geometric proof of the Hirschowitz-type bound on the Lagrangian Segre invariant for orthogonal bundles over X, analogous to those given for vector bundles and symplectic bundles in [2, 3]. From the non-defectivity we also deduce an interesting feature of a general orthogonal bundle over X, contrasting with the classical and symplectic cases: Any maximal Lagran…
We consider here the problem, which is quite classical in Algebraic geometry, of studying the secant varieties of a projective variety $X$. The case we concentrate on is when $X$ is a Veronese variety, a Grassmannian or a Segre variety. Not only these varieties are among the ones that have been most classically studied, but a strong motivation in taking them into consideration is the fact that they parameterize, respectively, symmetric, skew-symmetric and general tensors, which are decomposable, and their secant varieties give a stratification of tensors via tensor rank. We collect here most o…
In this paper we construct free resolutions of certain class of closed subvarieties of affine space of symmetric matrices (of a given size). Our class covers the symmetric determinantal varieties (i.e., determinantal varieties in the space of symmetric matrices), whose resolutions were first constructed by Józefiak-Pragacz-Weyman. Our approach follows the techniques developed in Free Resolutions of Some Schubert Singularities by Kummini-Lakshmibai-Sastry-Seshadri, and uses the geometry of Schubert varieties.
We first prove an identity involving symmetric polynomials. This identity leads us into exploring the geometry of Lagrangian Grassmannians. As an insight applications, we obtain a formula for the integral over the Lagrangian Grassmannian of a characteristic class of the tautological sub-bundle. Moreover, a relation to that over the ordinary Grassmannian and its application to the degree formula for the Lagrangian Grassmannian are given. Finally, we present further applications to the computation of Schubert structure constants and three-point, degree $1$, genus $0$ Gromov--Witten invariants of…
Let $M$ be a Fano manifold, and $H^\star(M;\mathbb{C})$ be the quantum cohomology ring of $M$ with the quantum product $\star.$ For $σ\in H^*(M;\mathbb{C})$, denote by $[σ]$ the quantum multiplication operator $σ\star$ on $H^*(M;\mathbb{C})$. It was conjectured several years ago \cite{GGI, GI} and has been proved for many Fano manifols \cite{CL1, CH2, LiMiSh, Ke}, including our cases, that the operator $[c_1(M)]$ has a real valued eigenvalue $δ_0$ which is maximal among eigenvaules of $[c_1(M)]$. Galkin's lower bound conjecture \cite{Ga} states that for a Fano manifold $M,$ $δ_0\geq \mathrm{di…
We give positive formulas for the restriction of a Schubert Class to a T-fixed point in the equivariant K-theory and equivariant cohomology of the Lagrangian Grassmannian. Our formulas rely on a result of Ghorpade-Raghavan, which gives an equivariant Grobner degeneration of a Schubert variety in the neighborhood of a T-fixed point of the Lagrangian Grassmannian.
In this article, we make a close analysis on quantum multiplication operators on the quantum cohomology rings of Lagrangian and orthogonal Grassmannians, and give an explicit description on all simultaneous eigenvectors and the corresponding eigenvalues for these operators. As a result, we show that Conjecture $\mathcal{O}$ of Galkin, Golyshev and Iritani holds for these manifolds.
We verify in an elementary way a result of Peterson for the maximal orthogonal and Lagrangian Grassmannians, and then find Vafa-Intriligator type formulas which compute their 3-point, genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants. Finally we study total positivity of the related Peterson varieties and show that Rietsch's conjecture about the total positivity holds for these cases.
In this paper we show examples of computations achieved using the formulas of our previous paper, which express the push-forwards in equivariant cohomology as iterated residues at infinity. We consider the equivariant cohomology of the complex Lagrangian Grassmannian $LG(n)$ and the orthogonal Grassmannian with the action of the maximal torus. In particular, we show how to obtain some well-known results due to P. Pragacz and J. Ratajski on integrals of Schur polynomials over the Lagrangian Grassmannian $LG(n)$ and the orthogonal Grassmannian $OG(n)$.
We study the null fiber of a moment map related to dual pairs. We construct an equivariant resolution of singularities of the null fiber, and get conormal bundles of closed $ K_C $-orbits in the Lagrangian Grassmannian as the categorical quotient. The conormal bundles thus obtained turn out to be a resolution of singularities of the closure of nilpotent $ K_C $-orbits, which is a "quotient" of the resolution of the null fiber.
We give a embedding of the Lagrangian Grassmannian LG(n) inside an ordinary Grassmannian that is well-behaved with respect to the Wronski map. As a consequence, we obtain an analogue of the Mukhin-Tarasov-Varchenko theorem for LG(n). The restriction of the Wronski map to LG(n) has degree equal to the number of shifted or unshifted tableaux of staircase shape. For special fibres one can define bijections, which, in turn, gives a bijection between these two classes of tableaux. The properties of these bijections lead a geometric proof of a branching rule for the cohomological map H*(Gr(n,2n)) x …
Let $LG_n$ denote the Lagrangian Grassmannian parametrizing maximal isotropic (Lagrangian) subspaces of a fixed symplectic vector space of dimension $2n.$ For each strict partition $λ=(λ_1,...,λ_k)$ with $λ_1\leq n$ there is a Schubert variety $X(λ).$ Let $T$ denote a maximal torus of the symplectic group acting on $LG_n.$ Consider the $T$-equivariant cohomology of $LG_n$ and the $T$-equivariant fundamental class $σ(λ)$ of $X(λ).$ The main result of the present paper is an explicit formula for the restriction of the class $σ(λ)$ to any torus fixed point. The formula is written in terms of fact…
The purpose of this paper is to relate the variety parameterizing completely decomposable homogeneous polynomials of degree $d$ in $n+1$ variables on an algebraically closed field, called $\Split_{d}(\PP n)$, with the Grassmannian of $n-1$ dimensional projective subspaces of $\PP {n+d-1}$. We compute the dimension of some secant varieties to $\Split_{d}(\PP n)$ and find a counterexample to a conjecture that wanted its dimension related to the one of the secant variety to $\GG (n-1, n+d-1)$. Moreover by using an invariant embedding of the Veronse variety into the Plücker space, then we are able…
We prove a case of a positivity conjecture of Mihalcea-Singh, concerned with the local Euler obstructions associated to the Schubert stratification of the Lagrangian Grassmannian LG(n,2n). Combined with work of Aluffi-Mihalcea-Schürmann-Su, this further implies the positivity of the Mather classes for Schubert varieties in LG(n,2n), which Mihalcea-Singh had verified for the other cominuscule spaces of classical Lie type. Building on the work of Boe and Fu, we give a positive recursion for the local Euler obstructions, and use it to show that they provide a positive count of admissible labeling…
A. Mironov proposed a construction of lagrangian submanifolds in $\mathbb{C}^n$ and $\mathbb{C} \mathbb{P}^n$; there he was mostly motivated by the fact that these lagrangian submanifolds (which can have in general self intersections, therefore below we call them lagrangian cycles) present new example of minimal or Hamiltonian minimal lagrangian submanifolds. However the Mironov construction of lagrangian cycles itself can be directly extended to much wider class of compact algrebraic varieties: namely it works in the case when algebraic variety $X$ of complex dimension $n$ admits $T^k$ - acti…
We study linear projections on Pluecker space whose restriction to the Grassmannian is a non-trivial branched cover. When an automorphism of the Grassmannian preserves the fibers, we show that the Grassmannian is necessarily of m-dimensional linear subspaces in a symplectic vector space of dimension 2m, and the linear map is the Lagrangian involution. The Wronski map for a self-adjoint linear differential operator and pole placement map for symmetric linear systems are natural examples.
The vector space of symmetric matrices of size $n$ has a natural map to a projective space of dimension $2^n-1$ given by the principal minors. This map extends to the Lagrangian Grassmannian ${\rm LG}(n,2n)$ and over the complex numbers the image is defined, as a set, by quartic equations. In case the characteristic of the field is two, it was observed that, for $n=3,4$, the image is defined by quadrics. In this paper we show that this is the case for any $n$ and that moreover the image is the spinor variety associated to ${\rm Spin}(2n+1)$. Since some of the motivating examples are of interes…
We introduce a completely integrable system on the Grassmannian of 2-planes in an n-space associated with any triangulation of a polygon with n sides, and compute the potential function for its Lagrangian torus fiber. The moment polytopes of this system for different triangulations are related by an integral piecewise-linear transformation, and the corresponding potential functions are related by its geometric lift in the sense of Berenstein and Zelevinsky.
In this article we construct Laurent polynomial Landau-Ginzburg models for cominuscule homogeneous spaces. These Laurent polynomial potentials are defined on a particular algebraic torus inside the Lie-theoretic mirror model constructed for arbitrary homogeneous spaces in arXiv:math/0511124. The Laurent polynomial takes a similar shape to the one given in arXiv:alg-geom/9603021 for projective complete intersections, i.e. it is the sum of the toric coordinates plus a quantum term. We also give a general enumeration method for the summands in the quantum term of the potential in terms of the qui…
The aim of this paper is to study codimension one foliations on rational homogeneous spaces, with a focus on the moduli space of foliations of low degree on Grassmannians and cominuscule spaces. Using equivariant techniques, we show that codimension one degree zero foliations on (ordinary, orthogonal, symplectic) Grassmannians of lines, some spinor varieties, some Lagrangian Grassmannians, the Cayley plane (an $E_6$-variety) and the Freudenthal variety (an $E_7$-variety) are identified with restrictions of foliations on the ambient projective space. We also provide some evidence that such resu…
We express a Schubert expansion of the Chern-Mather class for Schubert varieties in the even orthogonal Grassmannian via integrals involving Pfaffians and pushforward of the small resolutions in the sense of Intersection Cohomology (IH) constructed by Sankaran and Vanchinathan, instead of the Nash blowup. The equivariant localization is employed to show the way of computing the integral. As a byproduct, we present the computations. For analogy and the completion of the method in ordinary Grassmannians, we also suggest Kazhdan-Lusztig classes associated to Schubert varieties in the Lagrangian a…
Quivers play an important role in the representation theory of algebras, with a key ingredient being the path algebra and the preprojective algebra. Quiver grassmannians are varieties of submodules of a fixed module of the path or preprojective algebra. In the current paper, we study these objects in detail. We show that the quiver grassmannians corresponding to submodules of certain injective modules are homeomorphic to the lagrangian quiver varieties of Nakajima which have been well studied in the context of geometric representation theory. We then refine this result by finding quiver grassm…
Let V be a 2n-dimensional complex symplectic space. Let G' be the Lagrangian Grassmannian of maximal isotropic subspaces of V embedded via the inclusion i into the Grassmannian G of all n-dimensional subspaces of V. We discuss the restriction via i* of a Schubert class from H(G), as an integral linear combination of Schubert classes in H(G'). Among the main tools we mention Stembridge's results on shifted tableaux. Using these results and a generalization of the Macdonald-You identity from an earlier author's paper, we establish several related algebro-geometric formulas.