Littlewood-Richardson Homotopies for Schubert Problems (preliminary report)

Abstract:

Given a sequence of nested linear spaces (called flags) and prescribed dimensions for each flag, a Schubert problem asks for all planes that meet the given flags at the prescribed dimensions. A geometric Littlewood-Richardson rule developed by Ravi Vakil leads to homotopy algorithms to solve a Schubert problem. Littlewood-Richardson homotopies are the families of polynomial systems constructed by these homotopy algorithms. Symbolically, homotopy algorithms degenerate a moving flag, using polynomial equations to keep conditions imposed by other flags fixed. At the degenerate configuration of the flag, a linear system provides a start solution for a path to track by numerical continuation methods. The specialization of a flag follows a combinatorial checker game. For sufficiently generic Schubert problems, the number of paths to track is optimal. The Littlewood-Richardson homotopies are implemented using the path trackers of the software package PHCpack. This work is joint with Frank Sottile and Ravi Vakil.

AMS Special Session on Recent Advances in Symbolic Algebra and Analysis. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 4-5 April 2009.

slides of the talk