A subgroup H of a reductive group G is horospherical if it contains a maximal unipotent subgroup. We describe the Grothendieck semigroup of invariant subspaces of regular functions on G/H as a semigroup of convex polytopes. From this we obtain a formula for the number of solutions of a generic system of equations on G/H in terms of mixed volume of polytopes. This generalizes Bernstein-Kushnirenko theorem from toric geometry.
Let X and Y be horospherical Mori fibre spaces which are birational equivariantly with respect to the group action. Then, there is a horospherical Sarkisov program from X/S to Y /T .
In a previous work, we described the Minimal Model Program in the family of $\Qbb$-Gorenstein projective horospherical varieties, by studying certain continuous changes of moment polytopes of polarized horospherical varieties. Here, we summarize the results of the previous work and we explain how to generalize them in order to describe the Log Minimal Model Program for pairs $(X,\D)$ when $X$ is a projective horospherical variety.
We describe the Minimal Model Program in the family of $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein projective horospherical varieties, by studying a family of polytopes defined from the moment polytope of a Cartier divisor of the variety we begin with. In particular, we generalize the results on MMP in toric varieties due to M. Reid, and we complete the results on MMP in spherical varieties due to M. Brion in the case of horospherical varieties.
A horospherical variety is a normal algebraic variety where a reductive algebraic group acts with an open orbit which is a torus bundle over a flag variety. For example, toric varieties and flag varieties are horospherical. In this paper, we classify Fano horospherical varieties in terms of certain rational polytopes that generalize the reflexive polytopes considered by V. Batyrev. Then, we obtain an upper bound on the degree of smooth Fano horospherical varieties, analogus to that given by O. Debarre in the toric case. We extend a recent result of C. Casagrande: the Picard number of any Fano …
We present our implementation of an algorithm which functions as a numerical oracle for the Newton polytope of a hypersurface in the Macaulay2 package NumericalNP.m2. We propose a tropical membership test, relying on this algorithm, for higher codimension varieties based on ideas from Hept and Theobald. To showcase this software, we investigate the Newton polytope of both a hypersurface coming from algebraic vision and the Luroth invariant.
The bifurcation sets of polynomial functions have been studied by many mathematicians from various points of view. In particular, Némethi and Zaharia described them in terms of Newton polytopes. In this paper, we will show analogous results for rational functions.
We study normal directions to facets of the Newton polytope of the discriminant of the Laurent polynomial system via the tropical approach. We use the combinatorial construction proposed by Dickenstein, Feichtner and Sturmfels for the tropicalization of algebraic varieties admitting a parametrization by a linear map followed by a monomial map.
A Newton-Okounkov polytope of a complete flag variety can be turned into a convex geometric model for Schubert calculus. Namely, we can represent Schubert cycles by linear combinations of faces of the polytope so that the intersection product of cycles corresponds to the set-theoretic intersection of faces (whenever the latter are transverse). We explain the general framework and survey particular realizations of this approach in types A, B and C.
For classical groups SL(n), SO(n) and Sp(2n), we define uniformly geometric valuations on the corresponding complete flag varieties. The valuation in every type comes from a natural coordinate system on the open Schubert cell and is combinatorially related to the Gelfand-Zetlin pattern in the same type. In types A and C, we identify the corresponding Newton-Okounkov polytopes with the Feigin-Fourier-Littelmann-Vinberg polytopes. In types B and D, we compute low-dimensional examples and formulate open questions.
We compute the Newton--Okounkov bodies of line bundles on a Bott--Samelson resolution of the complete flag variety of $GL_n$ for a geometric valuation coming from a flag of translated Schubert subvarieties. The Bott--Samelson resolution corresponds to the decomposition $(s_1)(s_2s_1)(s_3s_2s_1)(\ldots)(s_{n-1}\ldots s_1)$ of the longest element in the Weyl group, and the Schubert subvarieties correspond to the terminal subwords in this decomposition. We prove that the resulting Newton--Okounkov polytopes for semiample line bundles satisfy the additivity property with respect to the Minkowski s…
We develop a collection of numerical algorithms which connect ideas from polyhedral geometry and algebraic geometry. The first algorithm we develop functions as a numerical oracle for the Newton polytope of a hypersurface and is based on ideas of Hauenstein and Sottile. Additionally, we construct a numerical tropical membership algorithm which uses the former algorithm as a subroutine. Based on recent results of Esterov, we give an algorithm which recursively solves a sparse polynomial system when the support of that system is either lacunary or triangular. Prior to explaining these results, w…
In this article we analyze the global diffeomorphism property of polynomial maps $F:\mathbb{R}^n\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^n$ by studying the properties of the Newton polytopes at infinity corresponding to the sum of squares polynomials $\|F\|_2^2$. This allows us to identify a class of polynomial maps $F$ for which their global diffeomorphism property on $\mathbb{R}^n$ is equivalent to their Jacobian determinant $\text{det }JF$ vanishing nowhere on $\mathbb{R}^n$. In other words, we identify a class of polynomial maps for which the Real Jacobian Conjecture, which was proven to be false in general,…
In this survey I summarize the constructions of toric degenerations obtained from valuations and Gröbner theory and describe in which sense they are equivalent. I show how adapted bases can be used to generalize the classical Newton polytope to what is called a $\mathbb B$-Newton polytope. The $\mathbb B$-Newton polytope determines the Newton--Okounkov polytopes of all Khovanskii-finite valuations sharing the adapted standard monomial basis $\mathbb B$.
A Newton-Okounkov convex body is a convex body constructed from a projective variety with a valuation on its homogeneous coordinate ring; this generalizes a Newton polytope for a toric variety. This convex body has various kinds of information about the original projective variety; for instance, Kaveh showed that the string polytopes from representation theory are examples of Newton-Okounkov bodies for Schubert varieties. In this paper, we extend the notion of string polytopes for Demazure modules to generalized Demazure modules, and prove that the resulting generalized string polytopes are id…
The theory of Newton-Okounkov polytopes is a generalization of that of Newton polytopes for toric varieties, and it gives a systematic method of constructing toric degenerations of a projective variety. In the case of Schubert varieties, their Newton-Okounkov polytopes are deeply connected with representation theory. Indeed, Littelmann's string polytopes and Nakashima-Zelevinsky's polyhedral realizations are obtained as Newton-Okounkov polytopes of Schubert varieties. In this paper, we apply the folding procedure to a Newton-Okounkov polytope of a Schubert variety, which relates Newton-Okounko…
The purpose of this note is to give an exposition of some interesting combinatorics and convex geometry concepts that appear in algebraic geometry in relation to counting the number of solutions of a system of polynomial equations in several variables over complex numbers. The exposition is aimed for a general audience in mathematics and we hope to be accessible to undergraduate as well as advance high school students. The topics discussed belong to relatively new, and closely related branches of algebraic geometry which are usually referred to as tropical geometry and toric geometry. These ar…
The Newton polytope related to a ``minimal" counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture is introduced and described. This description allows to obtain a sharper estimate for the geometric degree of the polynomial mapping given by a Jacobian pair and to give a new proof of the Abhyankar's two characteristic pair case.
In this paper we compute the Newton polytope $\mathcal M_A$ of the Morse discriminant in the space of univariate polynomials with the given support set $A.$ Namely, we establish a surjection between the set of all combinatorial types of Morse univariate tropical polynomials and the vertices of $\mathcal M_A.$
Marked chain-order polytopes are convex polytopes constructed from a marked poset, which give a discrete family relating a marked order polytope with a marked chain polytope. In this paper, we consider the Gelfand-Tsetlin poset of type A, and realize the associated marked chain-order polytopes as Newton-Okounkov bodies of the flag variety. Our realization connects previous realizations of Gelfand-Tsetlin polytopes and Feigin-Fourier-Littelmann-Vinberg polytopes as Newton-Okounkov bodies in a uniform way. As an application, we prove that the flag variety degenerates into the irreducible normal …
Let X \subset Proj(V) be a projective spherical G-variety, where V is a finite dimensional G-module and G = SP(2n, C). In this paper, we show that X can be deformed, by a flat deformation, to the toric variety corresponding to a convex polytope Δ(X). The polytope Δ(X) is the polytope fibred over the moment polytope of X with the Gelfand-Cetlin polytopes as fibres. We prove this by showing that if X is a horospherical variety, e.g. flag varieties and Grassmanians, the homogeneous coordinate ring of X can be embedded in a Laurent polynomial algebra and has a SAGBI basis with respect to a natural…
We compute the Newton--Okounkov bodies of line bundles on the complete flag variety of GL_n for a geometric valuation coming from a flag of translated Schubert subvarieties. The Schubert subvarieties correspond to the terminal subwords in the decomposition (s_1)(s_2s_1)(s_3s_2s_1)(...)(s_{n-1}...s_1) of the longest element in the Weyl group. The resulting Newton--Okounkov bodies coincide with the Feigin--Fourier--Littelmann--Vinberg polytopes in type A.
A real algebraic variety is maximal (with respect to the Smith-Thom inequality) if the sum of the Betti numbers (with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ coefficients) of the real part of the variety is equal to the sum of Betti numbers of its complex part. We prove that there exist polytopes that are not Newton polytopes of any maximal hypersurface in the corresponding toric variety. On the other hand we show that for any polytope $Δ$ there are families of hypersurfaces with the Newton polytopes $(λΔ)_{λ\in \mathbb{N}}$ that are asymptotically maximal when $λ$ tends to infinity. We also show that these results ge…
We apply tropical geometry to study the image of a map defined by Laurent polynomials with generic coefficients. If this image is a hypersurface then our approach gives a construction of its Newton polytope.
Let $X$ be the family of hypersurfaces in the odd-dimensional torus ${\mathbb T}^{2n+1}$ defined by a Laurent polynomial $f$ with fixed exponents and variable coefficients. We show that if $nΔ$, the dilation of the Newton polytope $Δ$ of $f$ by the factor $n$, contains no interior lattice points, then the Picard-Fuchs equation of $W_{2n}H^{2n}_{\rm DR}(X)$ has a full set of algebraic solutions (where $W_\bullet$ denotes the weight filtration on de Rham cohomology). We also describe a procedure for finding solutions of these Picard-Fuchs equations.
We introduce the notion of a favourable module for a complex unipotent algebraic group, whose properties are governed by the combinatorics of an associated polytope. We describe two filtrations of the module, one given by the total degree on the PBW basis of the corresponding Lie algebra, the other by fixing a homogeneous monomial order on the PBW basis. In the favourable case a basis of the module is parameterized by the lattice points of a normal polytope. The filtrations induce flat degenerations of the corresponding flag variety to its abelianized version and to a toric variety, the specia…
It is known that the homogeneous coordinate ring of a Grassmannian has a cluster structure, which is induced from the combinatorial structure of a plabic graph. A plabic graph is a certain bipartite graph described on the disk, and there is a family of plabic graphs giving a cluster structure of the same Grassmannian. Such plabic graphs are related by the operation called square move which can be considered as the mutation in cluster theory. By using a plabic graph, we also obtain the Newton--Okounkov polytope which gives a toric degeneration of the Grassmannian. The purposes of this article i…
Tropical geometry and its applications indicate a "theory of syzygies" over polytope semirings. Taking cue from this indication, we study a notion of syzygies over the polytope semiring. We begin our exploration with the concept of Newton basis, an analogue of Gröbner basis that captures the image of an ideal under the Newton polytope map. The image ${\rm New}(I)$ of a graded ideal $I$ under the Newton polytope is a graded sub-semimodule of the polytope semiring. Analogous to the Hilbert series, we define the notion of Newton-Hilbert series that encodes the rank of each graded piece of ${\rm N…
The main result of this note is that the toric degenerations of flag varieties associated to string polytopes and certain Bott-Samelson resolutions of flag varieties fit into a commutative diagram which gives a resolution of singularities of singular toric varieties corresponding to string polytopes. Our main tool is a result of Anderson which shows that the toric degenerations arising from Newton-Okounkov bodies are functorial in an appropriate sense. We also use results of Fujita which show that Newton-Okounkov bodies of Bott-Samelson varieties with respect to a certain valuation $ν_{max}$ c…
We determine the $166\,104$ extremal monomials of the discriminant of a quaternary cubic form. These are in bijection with $D$-equivalence classes of regular triangulations of the $3$-dilated tetrahedron. We describe how to compute these triangulations and their $D$-equivalence classes in order to arrive at our main result. The computation poses several challenges, such as dealing with the sheer amount of triangulations effectively, as well as devising a suitably fast algorithm for computation of a $D$-equivalence class.
In this article, we propose a geometric programming method in order to compute lower bounds for real polynomials. We provide new sufficient conditions for polynomials to be nonnegative as well as to have a sum of binomial squares representation. These criteria rely on the coefficients and the support of a polynomial and generalize all previous ones by Lasserre, Ghasemi, Marshall, Fidalgo and Kovacec to polynomials with arbitrary simplex Newton polytopes. This generalization yields a geometric programming approach for computing lower bounds for polynomials that significantly extends the geometr…
We propose a new lifting and recombination scheme for rational bivariate polynomial factorization that takes advantage of the Newton polytope geometry. We obtain a deterministic algorithm that can be seen as a sparse version of an algorithm of Lecerf, with now a polynomial complexity in the volume of the Newton polytope. We adopt a geometrical point of view, the main tool being derived from some algebraic osculation criterions in toric varieties.
For functions defined on C^n or (R_+)^n we construct a dequantization transform, which is closely related to the Maslov dequantization. The subdifferential at the origin of a dequantized polynomial coincides with its Newton polytope. For the semiring of polynomials with nonnegative coefficients, the dequantization transform is a homomorphism of this semiring to the idempotent semiring of convex polytopes with the well-known Minkowski operations. Using the dequantization transform we generalize these results to a wide class of functions and convex sets.
The Gelfand-Tsetlin and the Feigin-Fourier-Littelmann-Vinberg polytopes for the Grassmannians are defined, from the perspective of representation theory, to parametrize certain bases for highest weight irreducible modules. These polytopes are Newton-Okounkov bodies for the Grassmannian and, in particular, the GT-polytope is an example of a string polytope. The polytopes admit a combinatorial description as the Stanley's order and chain polytopes of a certain poset, as shown by Ardila, Bliem and Salaza. We prove that these polytopes occur among matching field polytopes. Moreover, we show that t…
The amoeba of a Laurent polynomial $f \in \C[z_1^{\pm 1},\ldots,z_n^{\pm 1}]$ is the image of its zero set $\mathcal{V}(f)$ under the log-absolute-value map. Understanding the space of amoebas (i.e., the decomposition of the space of all polynomials, say, with given support or Newton polytope, with regard to the existing complement components) is a widely open problem. In this paper we investigate the class of polynomials $f$ whose Newton polytope $\New(f)$ is a simplex and whose support $A$ contains exactly one point in the interior of $\New(f)$. Amoebas of polynomials in this class may have …
A classical result of Schubert calculus is an inductive description of Schubert cycles using divided difference (or push-pull) operators in Chow rings. We define convex geometric analogs of push-pull operators and describe their applications to the theory of Newton-Okounkov convex bodies. Convex geometric push-pull operators yield an inductive construction of Newton-Okounkov polytopes of Bott-Samelson varieties. In particular, we construct a Minkowski sum of Feigin-Fourier-Littelmann-Vinberg polytopes using convex geometric push-pull operators in type A.
Given a complex algebraic hypersurface~$H$, we introduce a polyhedral complex which is a subset of the Newton polytope of the defining polynomial for~$H$ and enjoys the key topological and combinatorial properties of the amoeba of~$H.$ We provide an explicit formula for this polyhedral complex in the case when the spine of the amoeba is dual to a triangulation of the Newton polytope of the defining polynomial. In particular, this yields a description of the polyhedral complex when the hypersurface is optimal.
Assume that the valuation semigroup $Γ(λ)$ of an arbitrary partial flag variety corresponding to the line bundle $\mathcal L_λ$ constructed via a full-rank valuation is finitely generated and saturated. We use Ehrhart theory to prove that the associated Newton-Okounkov body, which happens to be a rational, convex polytope, contains exactly one lattice point in its interior if and only if $\mathcal L_λ$ is the anticanonical line bundle. Furthermore we use this unique lattice point to construct the dual polytope of the Newton-Okounkov body and prove that this dual is a lattice polytope using a r…
Let $\K=\C$, or $\R$, and $S_f$ be the set of points in $\K^n$ at which a polynomial map $f:\K^n\rightarrow\K^n$ is non-proper. Jelonek proved that $S_f$ is a semi-algebraic set that is ruled by polynomial curves, with $\dim S_f\leq n-1$, and provided a method to compute $S_f$ for $\K = \C$. However, such methods do not exist for $\K = \R$. In this paper, we establish a straightforward description of $S_f$ for a large family of non-proper maps $f$ using the Newton polytopes of the polynomials appearing in $f$. Thus resulting in a new method for computing $S_f$ that works for $\K=\R$, and highl…
We initiate a study of the Euclidean Distance Degree in the context of sparse polynomials. Specifically, we consider a hypersurface f=0 defined by a polynomial f that is general given its support, such that the support contains the origin. We show that the Euclidean Distance Degree of f=0 equals the mixed volume of the Newton polytopes of the associated Lagrange multiplier equations. We discuss the implication of our result for computational complexity and give a formula for the Euclidean distance degree when the Newton polytope is a rectangular parallelepiped.
We show that the Newton polytope of a polynomial has a strong impact on the distribution of its mass and zeros. The basic theme is that Newton polytopes determine allowed and forbidden regions for these distributions. We equip the space of (holomorphic) polynomials of degree $\leq p$ in $m$ complex variables with its usual $SU(m + 1)$-invariant Gaussian probability measure and then consider the conditional measure induced on the subspace of polynomials with fixed Newton polytope $P$. We then determine the asymptotics of the conditional expectation $E_{|N P}(Z^k)$ of simultaneous zeros of $k$ p…
We consider the problem of estimating the multiplicity of a polynomial when restricted to the smooth analytic trajectory of a (possibly singular) polynomial vector field at a given point or points, under an assumption known as the D-property. Nesterenko has developed an elimination theoretic approach to this problem which has been widely used in transcendental number theory. We propose an alternative approach to this problem based on more local analytic considerations. In particular we obtain simpler proofs to many of the best known estimates, and give more general formulations in terms of New…
The Newton polytope $P_f$ of a polynomial $f$ is well known to have a strong impact on its zeros, as in the Kouchnirenko-Bernstein theorem on the number of simultaneous zeros of $m$ polynomials with given Newton polytopes. In this article, we show that $P_f$ also has a strong impact on the distribution of zeros of one or several polynomials. We equip the space of (holomorphic) polynomials of degree $\leq N$ in $m$ complex variables with its usual $SU(m+1)$-invariant Gaussian measure and then consider the conditional measures $γ_{|NP}$ induced on the subspace of polynomials whose Newton polytop…
For any two integers $k,n$, $2\leq k\leq n$, let $f:(\mathbb{C}^*)^n\rightarrow\mathbb{C}^k$ be a generic polynomial map with given Newton polytopes. It is known that points, whose fiber under $f$ has codimension one, form a finite set $C_1(f)$ in $\mathbb{C}^k$. For maps $f$ above, we show that $C_1(f)$ is empty if $k\geq 3$, we classify all Newton polytopes contributing to $C_1(f)\neq \emptyset$ for $k=2$, and we compute $|C_1(f)|$.
