Combinatorial aspects of the conserved quantities of the tropical periodic Toda lattice

Abstract

The tropical periodic Toda lattice (trop p-Toda) is a dynamical system attracting attention in the area of the interplay of integrable systems and tropical geometry. We show that the Young diagrams associated with trop p-Toda given by two very different definitions are identical. The first definition is given via a Lax representation of the discrete periodic Toda lattice, and the second one is associated with a generalization of the Kerov–Kirillov–Reshetikhin bijection in the combinatorics of the Bethe ansatz. By means of this identification, it is shown for the first time that the Young diagrams given by the latter definition are preserved under time evolution. This result is regarded as an important first step in clarifying the iso-level set structure of this dynamical system in general cases, i.e. not restricted to generic cases.