Schubert calculus

Last updated

In mathematics, Schubert calculus [1] is a branch of algebraic geometry introduced in the nineteenth century by Hermann Schubert in order to solve various counting problems of projective geometry and, as such, is viewed as part of enumerative geometry. Giving it a more rigorous foundation was the aim of Hilbert's 15th problem. It is related to several more modern concepts, such as characteristic classes, and both its algorithmic aspects and applications remain of current interest. The term Schubert calculus is sometimes used to mean the enumerative geometry of linear subspaces of a vector space, which is roughly equivalent to describing the cohomology ring of Grassmannians. Sometimes it is used to mean the more general enumerative geometry of algebraic varieties that are homogenous spaces of simple Lie groups. Even more generally, Schubert calculus is sometimes understood as encompassing the study of analogous questions in generalized cohomology theories.

Contents

The objects introduced by Schubert are the Schubert cells, [2] which are locally closed sets in a Grassmannian defined by conditions of incidence of a linear subspace in projective space with a given flag. For further details see Schubert variety.

The intersection theory [3] of these cells, which can be seen as the product structure in the cohomology ring of the Grassmannian, consisting of associated cohomology classes, allows in particular the determination of cases in which the intersections of cells results in a finite set of points. A key result is that the Schubert cells (or rather, the classes of their Zariski closures, the Schubert cycles or Schubert varieties ) span the whole cohomology ring.

The combinatorial aspects mainly arise in relation to computing intersections of Schubert cycles. Lifted from the Grassmannian, which is a homogeneous space, to the general linear group that acts on it, similar questions are involved in the Bruhat decomposition and classification of parabolic subgroups (as block triangular matrices).


Construction

Schubert calculus can be constructed using the Chow ring [3] of the Grassmannian, where the generating cycles are represented by geometrically defined data. [4] Denote the Grassmannian of -planes in a fixed -dimensional vector space as , and its Chow ring as . (Note that the Grassmannian is sometimes denoted if the vector space isn't explicitly given or as if the ambient space and its -dimensional subspaces are replaced by their projectizations.) Choosing an (arbitrary) complete flag

to each weakly decreasing -tuple of integers , where

i.e., to each partition of weight

whose Young diagram fits into the rectangular one for the partition , we associate a Schubert variety [1] [2] (or Schubert cycle) , defined as

This is the closure, in the Zariski topology, of the Schubert cell [1] [2]

which is used when considering cellular homology instead of the Chow ring. The latter are disjoint affine spaces, of dimension , whose union is .

An equivalent characterization of the Schubert cell may be given in terms of the dual complete flag

where

Then consists of those -dimensional subspaces that have a basis consisting of elements

of the subspaces

Since the homology class , called a Schubert class, does not depend on the choice of complete flag , it can be written as

It can be shown that these classes are linearly independent and generate the Chow ring as their linear span. The associated intersection theory is called Schubert calculus. For a given sequence with the Schubert class is usually just denoted . The Schubert classes given by a single integer , (i.e., a horizontal partition), are called special classes. Using the Giambelli formula below, all the Schubert classes can be generated from these special classes.

Other notational conventions

In some sources, [1] [2] the Schubert cells and Schubert varieties are labelled differently, as and , respectively, where is the complementary partition to with parts

,

whose Young diagram is the complement of the one for within the rectangular one (reversed, both horizontally and vertically).

Another labelling convention for and is and , respectively, where is the multi-index defined by

The integers are the pivot locations of the representations of elements of in reduced matricial echelon form.

Explanation

In order to explain the definition, consider a generic -plane . It will have only a zero intersection with for , whereas

for

For example, in , a -plane is the solution space of a system of five independent homogeneous linear equations. These equations will generically span when restricted to a subspace with , in which case the solution space (the intersection of with ) will consist only of the zero vector. However, if , and will necessarily have nonzero intersection. For example, the expected dimension of intersection of and is , the intersection of and has expected dimension , and so on.

The definition of a Schubert variety states that the first value of with is generically smaller than the expected value by the parameter . The -planes given by these constraints then define special subvarieties of . [4]

Properties

Inclusion

There is a partial ordering on all -tuples where if for every . This gives the inclusion of Schubert varieties

showing an increase of the indices corresponds to an even greater specialization of subvarieties.

Dimension formula

A Schubert variety has dimension equal to the weight

of the partition . Alternatively, in the notational convention indicated above, its codimension in is the weight

of the complementary partition in the dimensional rectangular Young diagram.

This is stable under inclusions of Grassmannians. That is, the inclusion

defined, for , by

has the property

and the inclusion

defined by adding the extra basis element to each -plane, giving a -plane,

does as well

Thus, if and are a cell and a subvariety in the Grassmannian , they may also be viewed as a cell and a subvariety within the Grassmannian for any pair with and .

Intersection product

The intersection product was first established using the Pieri and Giambelli formulas.

Pieri formula

In the special case , there is an explicit formula of the product of with an arbitrary Schubert class given by

where , are the weights of the partitions. This is called the Pieri formula , and can be used to determine the intersection product of any two Schubert classes when combined with the Giambelli formula . For example,

and

Giambelli formula

Schubert classes for partitions of any length can be expressed as the determinant of a matrix having the special classes as entries.

This is known as the Giambelli formula . It has the same form as the first Jacobi-Trudi identity, expressing arbitrary Schur functions as determinants in terms of the complete symmetric functions .

For example,

and

General case

The intersection product between any pair of Schubert classes is given by

where are the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. [5] The Pieri formula is a special case of this, when has length .

Relation with Chern classes

There is an easy description of the cohomology ring, or the Chow ring, of the Grassmannian using the Chern classes of two natural vector bundles over . We have the exact sequence of vector bundles over

where is the tautological bundle whose fiber, over any element is the subspace itself, is the trivial vector bundle of rank , with as fiber and is the quotient vector bundle of rank , with as fiber. The Chern classes of the bundles and are

where is the partition whose Young diagram consists of a single column of length and

The tautological sequence then gives the presentation of the Chow ring as

One of the classical examples analyzed is the Grassmannian since it parameterizes lines in . Using the Chow ring , Schubert calculus can be used to compute the number of lines on a cubic surface. [4]

Chow ring

The Chow ring has the presentation

and as a graded Abelian group [6] it is given by

Lines on a cubic surface

Recall that a line in gives a dimension subspace of , hence an element of . Also, the equation of a line can be given as a section of . Since a cubic surface is given as a generic homogeneous cubic polynomial, this is given as a generic section . A line is a subvariety of if and only if the section vanishes on . Therefore, the Euler class of can be integrated over to get the number of points where the generic section vanishes on . In order to get the Euler class, the total Chern class of must be computed, which is given as

The splitting formula then reads as the formal equation

where and for formal line bundles . The splitting equation gives the relations

and .

Since can be viewed as the direct sum of formal line bundles

whose total Chern class is

it follows that

using the fact that

and

Since is the top class, the integral is then

Therefore, there are lines on a cubic surface.

See also

Related Research Articles

In mathematics, one can often define a direct product of objects already known, giving a new one. This induces a structure on the Cartesian product of the underlying sets from that of the contributing objects. More abstractly, one talks about the product in category theory, which formalizes these notions.

In mathematics, a geometric algebra is an extension of elementary algebra to work with geometrical objects such as vectors. Geometric algebra is built out of two fundamental operations, addition and the geometric product. Multiplication of vectors results in higher-dimensional objects called multivectors. Compared to other formalisms for manipulating geometric objects, geometric algebra is noteworthy for supporting vector division and addition of objects of different dimensions.

In mathematics, a product is the result of multiplication, or an expression that identifies objects to be multiplied, called factors. For example, 21 is the product of 3 and 7, and is the product of and . When one factor is an integer, the product is called a multiple.

In mathematical analysis and in probability theory, a σ-algebra on a set X is a nonempty collection Σ of subsets of X closed under complement, countable unions, and countable intersections. The ordered pair is called a measurable space.

In the mathematical field of real analysis, the monotone convergence theorem is any of a number of related theorems proving the convergence of monotonic sequences that are also bounded. Informally, the theorems state that if a sequence is increasing and bounded above by a supremum, then the sequence will converge to the supremum; in the same way, if a sequence is decreasing and is bounded below by an infimum, it will converge to the infimum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fokker–Planck equation</span> Partial differential equation

In statistical mechanics and information theory, the Fokker–Planck equation is a partial differential equation that describes the time evolution of the probability density function of the velocity of a particle under the influence of drag forces and random forces, as in Brownian motion. The equation can be generalized to other observables as well. The Fokker-Planck equation has multiple applications in information theory, graph theory, data science, finance, economics etc.

In statistics, the Gauss–Markov theorem states that the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator has the lowest sampling variance within the class of linear unbiased estimators, if the errors in the linear regression model are uncorrelated, have equal variances and expectation value of zero. The errors do not need to be normal, nor do they need to be independent and identically distributed. The requirement that the estimator be unbiased cannot be dropped, since biased estimators exist with lower variance. See, for example, the James–Stein estimator, ridge regression, or simply any degenerate estimator.

In linear algebra, a matrix is in row echelon form if it can be obtained as the result of Gaussian elimination. Every matrix can be put in row echelon form by applying a sequence of elementary row operations. The term echelon comes from the French "échelon", and refers to the fact that the nonzero entries of a matrix in row echelon form look like an inverted staircase.

In mathematics, the Grassmannian is a differentiable manifold that parameterizes the set of all -dimensional linear subspaces of an -dimensional vector space over a field . For example, the Grassmannian is the space of lines through the origin in , so it is the same as the projective space of one dimension lower than . When is a real or complex vector space, Grassmannians are compact smooth manifolds, of dimension . In general they have the structure of a nonsingular projective algebraic variety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radon transform</span> Integral transform

In mathematics, the Radon transform is the integral transform which takes a function f defined on the plane to a function Rf defined on the (two-dimensional) space of lines in the plane, whose value at a particular line is equal to the line integral of the function over that line. The transform was introduced in 1917 by Johann Radon, who also provided a formula for the inverse transform. Radon further included formulas for the transform in three dimensions, in which the integral is taken over planes. It was later generalized to higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces and more broadly in the context of integral geometry. The complex analogue of the Radon transform is known as the Penrose transform. The Radon transform is widely applicable to tomography, the creation of an image from the projection data associated with cross-sectional scans of an object.

In abstract algebra and multilinear algebra, a multilinear form on a vector space over a field is a map

In mathematics, the Plücker map embeds the Grassmannian , whose elements are k-dimensional subspaces of an n-dimensional vector space V, either real or complex, in a projective space, thereby realizing it as a projective algebraic variety. More precisely, the Plücker map embeds into the projectivization of the -th exterior power of . The image is algebraic, consisting of the intersection of a number of quadrics defined by the § Plücker relations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blowing up</span>

In mathematics, blowing up or blowup is a type of geometric transformation which replaces a subspace of a given space with the space of all directions pointing out of that subspace. For example, the blowup of a point in a plane replaces the point with the projectivized tangent space at that point. The metaphor is that of zooming in on a photograph to enlarge part of the picture, rather than referring to an explosion.

In mathematics, the classifying space for the unitary group U(n) is a space BU(n) together with a universal bundle EU(n) such that any hermitian bundle on a paracompact space X is the pull-back of EU(n) by a map X → BU(n) unique up to homotopy.

In statistics, the inverse Wishart distribution, also called the inverted Wishart distribution, is a probability distribution defined on real-valued positive-definite matrices. In Bayesian statistics it is used as the conjugate prior for the covariance matrix of a multivariate normal distribution.

In algebraic geometry, a Schubert variety is a certain subvariety of a Grassmannian, of -dimensional subspaces of a vector space , usually with singular points. Like the Grassmannian, it is a kind of moduli space, whose elements satisfy conditions giving lower bounds to the dimensions of the intersections of its elements , with the elements of a specified complete flag. Here may be a vector space over an arbitrary field, but most commonly this taken to be either the real or the complex numbers.

Low-rank matrix approximations are essential tools in the application of kernel methods to large-scale learning problems.

The streamline upwind Petrov–Galerkin pressure-stabilizing Petrov–Galerkin formulation for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations can be used for finite element computations of high Reynolds number incompressible flow using equal order of finite element space by introducing additional stabilization terms in the Navier–Stokes Galerkin formulation.

In geometry, a valuation is a finitely additive function from a collection of subsets of a set to an abelian semigroup. For example, Lebesgue measure is a valuation on finite unions of convex bodies of Other examples of valuations on finite unions of convex bodies of are surface area, mean width, and Euler characteristic.

In mathematics, a dual system, dual pair, or duality over a field is a triple consisting of two vector spaces and over and a non-degenerate bilinear map .

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Kleiman, S.L.; Laksov, Dan (1972). "Schubert Calculus". American Mathematical Monthly. American Mathematical Society. 79 (10): 1061–1082. doi:10.1080/00029890.1972.11993188. ISSN   0377-9017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Fulton, William (1997). Young Tableaux. With Applications to Representation Theory and Geometry, Chapt. 9.4. London Mathematical Society Student Texts. Vol. 35. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511626241. ISBN   9780521567244.
  3. 1 2 Fulton, William (1998). Intersection Theory. Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN   978-0-387-98549-7. MR   1644323.
  4. 1 2 3 3264 and All That (PDF). pp. 132, section 4.1, 200, section 6.2.1.
  5. Fulton, William (1997). Young Tableaux. With Applications to Representation Theory and Geometry, Chapt. 5. London Mathematical Society Student Texts. Vol. 35. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511626241. ISBN   9780521567244.
  6. Katz, Sheldon. Enumerative Geometry and String Theory. p. 96.