We prove that the initial degenerations of the flag variety admit closed immersions into finite inverse limits of flag matroid strata, where the diagrams are derived from matroidal subdivisions of a suitable flag matroid polytope. As an application, we prove that the initial degenerations of $\operatorname{F\ell}^{\circ}(n)$ -- the open subvariety of the complete flag variety $\operatorname{F\ell}(n)$ consisting of flags in general position -- are smooth and irreducible when $n\leq 4$. We also study the Chow quotient of $\operatorname{F\ell}(n)$ by the diagonal torus of $\operatorname{PGL}(n)$, and show that, for $n=4$, this is a log crepant resolution of its log canonical model.
We construct a family of flat semitoric degenerations for the Hibi variety of every finite distributive lattice. The irreducible components of each degeneration are the toric varieties associated with polytopes forming a regular subdivision of the order polytope of the underlying poset. These components are themselves Hibi varieties. For each degeneration in our family we also define the corresponding weight polytope and embed the degeneration into the associated toric variety as the union of orbit closures given by a set of faces. Every such weight polytope projects onto the order polytope wi…
We study toric degenerations of opposite Schubert and Richardson varieties inside degenerations of Grassmannians and flag varieties. These degenerations are parametrized by matching fields in the sense of Sturmfels and Zelevinsky. We construct so-called restricted matching field ideals whose generating sets are understood combinatorially through tableaux. We determine when these ideals are toric and coincide with Gröbner degenerations of Richardson varieties using the well established standard monomial theory for Grassmannians and flag varieties.
We continue, generalize and expand our study of linear degenerations of flag varieties from [G. Cerulli Irelli, X. Fang, E. Feigin, G. Fourier, M. Reineke, Math. Z. 287 (2017), no. 1-2, 615-654]. We realize partial flag varieties as quiver Grassmannians for equi-oriented type A quivers and construct linear degenerations by varying the corresponding quiver representation. We prove that there exists the deepest flat degeneration and the deepest flat irreducible degeneration: the former is the partial analogue of the mf-degenerate flag variety and the latter coincides with the partial PBW-degener…
Following the historical track in pursuing $T$-equivariant flat toric degenerations of flag varieties and spherical varieties, we explain how powerful tools in algebraic geometry and representation theory, such as canonical bases, Newton-Okounkov bodies, PBW-filtrations and cluster algebras come to push the subject forward.
PBW degenerations are a particularly nice family of flat degenerations of type A flag varieties. We show that the cohomology of any PBW degeneration of the flag variety surjects onto the cohomology of the original flag variety, and that this holds in an equivariant setting too. We also prove that the same is true in the symplectic setting when considering Feigin's linear degeneration of the symplectic flag variety.
We study algebraic, combinatorial and geometric aspects of weighted PBW-type degenerations of (partial) flag varieties in type $A$. These degenerations are labeled by degree functions lying in an explicitly defined polyhedral cone, which can be identified with a maximal cone in the tropical flag variety. Varying the degree function in the cone, we recover, for example, the classical flag variety, its abelian PBW degeneration, some of its linear degenerations and a particular toric degeneration.
We compute toric degenerations arising from the tropicalization of the full flag varieties $\mathcal{F}\ell_4$ and $\mathcal{F}\ell_5$ embedded in a product of Grassmannians. For $\mathcal{F}\ell_4$ and $\mathcal{F}\ell_5$ we compare toric degenerations arising from string polytopes and the FFLV polytope with those obtained from the tropicalization of the flag varieties. We also present a general procedure to find toric degenerations in the cases where the initial ideal arising from a cone of the tropicalization of a variety is not prime.
We study standard monomial bases for Richardson varieties inside the flag variety. In general, writing down a standard monomial basis for a Richardson variety can be challenging, as it involves computing so-called defining chains or key tableaux. However, for a certain family of Richardson varieties, indexed by compatible permutations, we provide a very direct and straightforward combinatorial rule for writing down a standard monomial basis. We apply this result to the study of toric degenerations of Richardson varieties. In particular, we provide a new family of toric degenerations of Richard…
A Mustafin degeneration is a degeneration of a flag variety induced by a vertex configuration in the Bruhat-Tits building of the projective linear group over a field with a non-archimedean discrete valuation. In the case where the flag type is projective space, Mustafin degenerations have been studied previously. We generalize the construction to the case of arbitrary flag types. We examine the special fiber of a Mustafin degeneration for reducedness and study the behavior of its components under a natural projection morphism between Mustafin degenerations, which arises from the inclusion of f…
Batyrev (et. al.) constructed a family of Calabi-Yau varieties using small toric degenerations of the full flag variety G/B. They conjecture this family to be mirror to generic anti-canonical hypersurfaces in G/B. Recently Alexeev and Brion, as a part of their work on toric degenerations of spherical varieties, have constructed many degenerations of G/B. For any such degeneration we construct a family of varieties, which we prove coincides with Batyrev's in the small case. We prove that any two such families are birational, thus proving that mirror families are independent of the choice of deg…
Linear degenerate flag varieties are degenerations of flag varieties as quiver Grassmannians. For type A flag varieties, we obtain characterizations of flatness, irreducibility and normality of these degenerations via rank tuples. Some of them are shown to be isomorphic to Schubert varieties and can be realized as highest weight orbits of partially degenerate Lie algebras, generalizing the corresponding results on degenerate flag varieties. To study normality, cell decompositions of quiver Grassmannians are constructed in a wider context of equioriented quivers of type A.
We present a review on the recently discovered link between the Lie theory,the theory of quiver Grassmannians, and various degenerations of flag varieties. Our starting point is the induced Poincaré--Birkhoff--Witt filtration on the highest weight representations and the corresponding PBW degenerate flag varieties.
Our main goal is to show that the Gelfand--Tsetlin toric degeneration of the type A flag variety can be obtained within a degenerate representation-theoretic framework similar to the theory of PBW degenerations. In fact, we provide such frameworks for all Gröbner degenerations intermediate between the flag variety and the GT toric variety. These degenerations are shown to induce filtrations on the irreducible representations and the associated graded spaces are acted upon by a certain associative algebra. To achieve our goal, we construct embeddings of our Gröbner degenerations into the projec…
We describe the effect of Feigin's flat degeneration of the type $\textrm{A}$ flag variety on its Schubert varieties. In particular, we study when they stay irreducible and in several cases we are able to encode reducibility of the degenerations in terms of symmetric group combinatorics. As a side result, we obtain an identification of some Schubert varieties with Richardson varieties in higher rank partial flag varieties.
Let $\Fl_λ$ be a generalized flag variety of a simple Lie group $G$ embedded into the projectivization of an irreducible $G$-module $V_λ$. We define a flat degeneration $\Fl_λ^a$, which is a ${\mathbb G}^M_a$ variety. Moreover, there exists a larger group $G^a$ acting on $\Fl_λ^a$, which is a degeneration of the group $G$. The group $G^a$ contains ${\mathbb G}^M_a$ as a normal subgroup. If $G$ is of type $A$, then the degenerate flag varieties can be embedded into the product of Grassmanians and thus to the product of projective spaces. The defining ideal of $\Fl^a_λ$ is generated by the set o…
One may construct a large class of Calabi-Yau varieties by taking anticanonical hypersurfaces in toric varieties obtained from reflexive polytopes. If the intersection of a reflexive polytope with a hyperplane through the origin yields a lower-dimensional reflexive polytope, then the corresponding Calabi-Yau varieties are fibered by lower-dimensional Calabi-Yau varieties. A top generalizes the idea of splitting a reflexive polytope into two pieces. In contrast to the classification of reflexive polytopes, there are infinite families of equivalence classes of tops. Tops may be used to describe …
We prove that a degeneration rationally connected varieties over a field of characteristic zero always contains a geometrically irreducible subvariety which is rationally connected.
There exist exactly 166 4-dimensional reflexive polytopes such that the corresponding 4-dimensional Gorenstein toric Fano varieties have at worst terminal singularities in codimension 3 and their anticanonical divisor is divisible by 2. For every such a polytope, one naturally obtains a family of Fano hypersurfaces X with at worst conifold singularities. A generic 3-dimensional Fano hypersurface X can be interpreted as a flat conifold degeneration of some smooth Fano 3-folds Y whose classification up to deformation was obtained by Iskovskikh, Mori and Mukai. In this case, both Fano varieties X…
In this paper we propose and discuss a mirror construction for complete intersections in partial flag manifolds $F(n_1, ..., n_l, n)$. This construction includes our previous mirror construction for complete intersection in Grassmannians and the mirror construction of Givental for complete flag manifolds. The key idea of our construction is a degeneration of $F(n_1, ..., n_l, n)$ to a certain Gorenstein toric Fano variety $P(n_1, ..., n_l, n)$ which has been investigated by Gonciulea and Lakshmibai. We describe a natural small crepant desingularization of $P(n_1, ..., n_l, n)$ and prove a gene…
We study semi-stable degenerations of toric varieties determined by certain partitions of their moment polytopes. Analyzing their defining equations we prove a property of uniqueness.
We show that various genus zero Gromov-Witten invariants for flag varieties representing different homology classes are indeed the same. In particular, many of them are classical intersection numbers of Schubert cycles.
A perfect PAC field containing an algebraically closed field is known to be $C_1$, i.e., every degeneration of a Fano complete intersection has a point. We prove that also every degeneration of a separably rationally connected variety has a point.
Knutson and Miller (2005) established a connection between the anti-diagonal Gröbner degenerations of matrix Schubert varieties and the pre-existing combinatorics of pipe dreams. They used this correspondence to give a geometrically-natural explanation for the appearance of the combinatorially-defined Schubert polynomials as representatives of Schubert classes. Recently, Hamaker, Pechenik, and Weigandt (2022) proposed a similar connection between diagonal degenerations of matrix Schubert varieties and bumpless pipe dreams, newer combinatorial objects introduced by Lam, Lee, and Shimozono (2021…
In this paper we generalize to the case of partial flags a result proved both by Spaltenstein and by Steinberg that relates the relative position of two complete flags and the irreducible components of the flag variety in which they lie, using the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence.
This note constructs the flat toric degeneration of the manifold FL_n of flags in C^n from [Gonciulea-Lakshmibai 96] as an explicit GIT quotient of the Gr"obner degeneration in [Knutson-Miller 03]. This implies that Schubert varieties degenerate to reduced unions of toric varieties, associated to faces indexed by rc-graphs (reduced pipe dreams) in the Gel'fand-Cetlin polytope. Our explicit description of the toric degeneration of FL_n provides a simple explanation of how Gel'fand-Cetlin decompositions for irreducible polynomial representations of GL_n arise via geometric quantization.
This paper introduces a two-parameter deformation of the cohomology of generalized flag varieties. One special case is the Belkale-Kumar deformation (used to study eigencones of Lie groups). Another picks out intersections of Schubert varieties that behave nicely under projections. Our construction yields a new proof that the Belkale-Kumar product is well-defined. This proof is shorter and more elementary than earlier proofs.
James Ax conjectured that every pseudo algebraically closed field is $C_1$. We prove this conjecture in characteristic 0 by relating it to degenerations of Fano varieties.
We provide a construction of examples of semistable degeneration via toric geometry. The applications include a higher dimensional generalization of classical degeneration of K3 surface into 4 rational components, an algebraic geometric version of decomposing K3 as the fiber sum of two E(1)'s as well as it's higher dimensional generalizations, and many other new examples.
In this survey, we discuss the state of art about the monodromy property for Calabi-Yau varieties. We explain what is the monodromy property for Calabi-Yau varieties and then discuss some examples of Calabi-Yau varieties that satisfy this property. After this recap, we discuss a possible approach to future research in this area.
Flag matroids are combinatorial abstractions of flags of linear subspaces, just as matroids are of linear subspaces. We introduce the flag Dressian as a tropical analogue of the partial flag variety, and prove a correspondence between: (a) points on the flag Dressian, (b) valuated flag matroids, (c) flags of projective tropical linear spaces, and (d) coherent flag matroidal subdivisions. We introduce and characterize projective tropical linear spaces, which serve as a fundamental tool in our proof. We apply the correspondence to prove that all valuated flag matroids on ground set up to size 5 …
Let $(C,ι)$ be a stable curve with an involution. Following a classical construction one can define its Prym variety $P$, which in this case turns out to be a semiabelian group variety and usually not complete. In this paper we study the question whether there are ``good'' compactifications of $P$ in analogy to compactified Jacobians. The answer to this question depends on whether we consider degenerations of principally polarized Prym varieties or degenerations with the induced (non-principal) polarization. We describe degeneration data of such degenerations. The main application of our theor…
We propose a theory of combinatorially explicit Schubert polynomials which represent the Schubert classes in the Borel presentation of the cohomology ring of orthogonal flag varieties. We use these polynomials to describe the arithmetic Schubert calculus on these spaces. We also give a method to compute the natural arithmetic intersection numbers which arise, and prove that they are all rational numbers.
We study positivity notions for the tropicalization of type A flag varieties and the flag Dressian. We focus on the hollow case, where we have one constituent of rank 1 and another of corank 1. We characterize the three different notions that exist for this case in terms of Plücker coordinates. These notions are the tropicalization of the totally non-negative flag variety, Bruhat subdivisions and the non-negative flag Dressian. We show the first example where the first two concepts above do not coincide. In this case the non-negative flag Dressian equals the tropicalization of the Plücker non-…
We develop a theory of multi-stage degenerations of toric varieties over finite rank valuation rings, extending the Mumford--Gubler theory in rank one. Such degenerations are constructed from fan-like structures over totally ordered abelian groups of finite rank. Our main theorem describes the geometry of successive special fibers in the degeneration in terms of the polyhedral geometry of a system of recession complexes associated to the fan.
In this paper we construct a degeneration of Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen varieties to toric varieties in an algebraic family and study the geometry of the resulting toric varieties. We give a natural set of torus invariant curves that generate the Chow group of $1$-cycles of the limiting toric variety and express the ample cone of this toric variety as a sub-cone of the ample cone of the corresponding Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen variety. We also give a description of Extremal and Mori rays and determine when this toric variety is Fano.
We construct closed immersions from initial degenerations of the spinor variety $\mathbb{S}_n$ to inverse limits of strata associated to even $Δ$-matroids. As an application, we prove that these initial degenerations are smooth and irreducible for $n\leq 5$ and identify the log canonical model of the Chow quotient of $\mathbb{S}_5$ by the action of the diagonal torus of $\operatorname{GL}(5)$.
Consider a family of Fano varieties $π: X \longrightarrow B\ni o$ over a curve germ with a smooth total space $X$. Assume that the generic fiber is smooth and the special fiber $F=π^{-1}(o)$ has simple normal crossings. Then $F$ is called a semistable degeneration of Fano varieties. We show that the dual complex of $F$ is a simplex of dimension $\leq \mathrm{dim}\ F$. Simplices of any admissible dimension can be realized for any dimension of the fiber. Using this result and the Minimal Model Program in dimension $3$ we reproduce the classification of the semistable degenerations of del Pezzo s…
The classical Ehresmann-Bruhat order describes the possible degenerations of a pair of flags in a linear space V under linear transformations of V; or equivalently, it describes the closure of an orbit of GL(V) acting diagonally on the product of two flag varieties. We consider the degenerations of a triple consisting of two flags and a line, or equivalently the closure of an orbit of GL(V) acting diagonally on the product of two flag varieties and a projective space. We give a simple rank criterion to decide whether one triple can degenerate to another. We also classify the minimal degenerati…
This is a survey on motivic zeta functions associated to abelian varieties and Calabi-Yau varieties over a discretely valued field. We explain how they are related to Denef and Loeser's motivic zeta function associated to a complex hypersurface singularity and we investigate the relation between the poles of the zeta function and the eigenvalues of the monodromy action on the tame $\ell$-adic cohomology of the variety. The motivic zeta function allows to generalize many interesting arithmetic invariants from abelian varieties to Calabi-Yau varieties and to compute them explicitly on a model wi…
We study Hilbert-Samuel multiplicity for points of Schubert varieties in the complete flag variety, by Groebner degenerations of the Kazhdan-Lusztig ideal. In the covexillary case, we give a positive combinatorial rule for multiplicity by establishing (with a Groebner basis) a reduced and equidimensional limit whose Stanley-Reisner simplicial complex is homeomorphic to a shellable ball or sphere. We show that multiplicity counts the number of facets of this complex. We also obtain a formula for the Hilbert series of the local ring. In particular, our work gives a multiplicity rule for Grassman…
The Hodge algebra structures on the homogeneous coordinate rings of Grassmann varieties provide semi-toric degenerations of these varieties. In this paper we construct these semi-toric degenerations using quasi-valuations and triangulations of Newton-Okounkov bodies.
We prove that K-polystable degenerations of Q-Fano varieties are unique. Furthermore, we show that the moduli stack of K-stable Q-Fano varieties is separated. Together with [Jia17,BL18], the latter result yields a separated Deligne-Mumford stack parametrizing all uniformly K-stable Q-Fano varieties of fixed dimension and volume. The result also implies that the automorphism group of a K-stable Q-Fano variety is finite.
We show that the counting of rational curves on a complete toric variety that are in general position to the toric prime divisors coincides with the counting of certain tropical curves. The proof is algebraic-geometric and relies on degeneration techniques and log deformation theory. This generalizes results of Mikhalkin obtained by different methods in the surface case to arbitrary dimensions.
The classical Ehresmann-Bruhat order describes the possible degenerations of a pair of flags in a finite-dimensional vector space V; or, equivalently, the closure of an orbit of the group GL(V) acting on the direct product of two full flag varieties. We obtain a similar result for triples consisting of two subspaces and a partial flag in V; this is equivalent to describing the closure of a GL(V)-orbit in the product of two Grassmannians and one flag variety. We give a rank criterion to check whether such a triple can be degenerated to another one, and we classify the minimal degenerations. Our…
