Séminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire, 89B.60 (2023), 12 pp.

Jonathan Boretsky, Christopher Eur and Lauren Williams

Polyhedral and Tropical Geometry of Flag Positroids

Abstract. A flag positroid of ranks r := (r1<...<rk) on [n] is a flag matroid that can be realized by a real rk × n matrix A such that the ri × ri minors of A involving rows 1,2,...,ri are nonnegative for all 1≤ik. In this abstract, we explore the polyhedral and tropical geometry of flag positroids, particularly when r := (a,a+1,...,b) is a sequence of consecutive numbers. In this case we show that the nonnegative tropical flag variety TrFlr,n≥0 equals the nonnegative flag Dressian FlDrr,n≥0, and that the points μ = (mu;a,...,μb) of TrFlr,n≥0 = FlDrr,n≥0 give rise to coherent subdivisions of flag positroid polytopes into (smaller) flag positroid polytopes. Our results have applications to Bruhat interval polytopes. For example, we show that a complete flag matroid polytope is a Bruhat interval polytope if and only if its (≤2)-dimensional faces are Bruhat interval polytopes. Our results also have applications to realizability questions. We define a positively oriented flag matroid to be a sequence of positively oriented matroids (&chi1,...,χk) which is also an oriented flag matroid. We then prove that every positively oriented flag matroid of ranks r = (a,a+1,...,b) is realizable.


Received: November 15, 2022. Accepted: February 20, 2023. Final version: April 1, 2023.

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