Affine Grassmannian Research Articles

Symplectic resolutions, symplectic duality, and Coulomb branches

Symplectic resolutions are an exciting new frontier of research in representation theory. One of the most fascinating aspects of this study is symplectic duality: the observation that these resolutions come in pairs with matching properties. The Coulomb branch construction allows us to produce and study many of these dual pairs. These notes survey much recent work in this area including quantization, categorification, and enumerative geometry. We particularly focus on ADE quiver varieties and affine Grassmannian slices.

Comparison of quiver varieties, loop Grassmannians and nilpotent cones in type A

In type A we find equivalences of geometries arising in three settings: Nakajima's (“framed”) quiver varieties, conjugacy classes of matrices and loop Grassmannians. These are all given by explicit formulas. In particular, we embedd the framed quiver varieties into Beilinson-Drinfeld Grassmannians. This provides a compactification of Nakajima varieties and a decomposition of affine Grassmannians into Nakajima varieties. As an application we provide a geometric version of symmetric and skew (GL(m),GL(n)) dualities.

Nilpotent varieties in symmetric spaces and twisted affine Schubert varieties

We relate the geometry of Schubert varieties in twisted affine Grassmannian and the nilpotent varieties in symmetric spaces. This extends some results of Achar–Henderson in the twisted setting. We also get some applications to the geometry of the order 2 nilpotent varieties in certain classical symmetric spaces.

Affine Grassmannians for triality groups

We study affine Grassmannians for ramified triality groups. These groups are of type D43, so they are forms of the orthogonal or the spin groups in 8 variables. They can be given as automorphisms of certain twisted composition algebras obtained from the octonion algebras. Using these composition algebras, we give descriptions of the affine Grassmannians for these triality groups as functors classifying suitable lattices in a fixed space.

K-theoretic Catalan functions

We prove that the K-k-Schur functions are part of a family of inhomogenous symmetric functions whose top homogeneous components are Catalan functions, the Euler characteristics of certain vector bundles on the flag variety. Lam-Schilling-Shimozono identified the K-k-Schur functions as Schubert representatives for K-homology of the affine Grassmannian for SLk+1. Our perspective reveals that the K-k-Schur functions satisfy a shift invariance property, and we deduce positivity of their branching coefficients from a positivity result of Baldwin and Kumar. We further show that a slight adjustment of our formulation for K-k-Schur functions produces a second shift-invariant basis which conjecturally has both positive branching and a rectangle factorization property. Building on work of Ikeda-Iwao-Maeno, we conjecture that this second basis gives the images of the Lenart-Maeno quantum Grothendieck polynomials under a K-theoretic analog of the Peterson isomorphism.

Differential operators on G/U and the Gelfand-Graev action

Let G be a complex semisimple group and U its maximal unipotent subgroup. We study the algebra D(G/U) of algebraic differential operators on G/U and also its quasi-classical counterpart: the algebra of regular functions on T⁎(G/U), the cotangent bundle. A long time ago, S. Gelfand and M. Graev have constructed an action of the Weyl group on D(G/U) by algebra automorphisms. The Gelfand-Graev construction was not algebraic, it involved analytic methods in an essential way. We give a new algebraic construction of the Gelfand-Graev action, as well as its quasi-classical counterpart. Our approach is based on Hamiltonian reduction and involves the ring of Whittaker differential operators on G/U, a twisted analogue of D(G/U).Our main result has an interpretation, via geometric Satake, in terms of spherical perverse sheaves on the affine Grassmannian for the Langlands dual group.

Hamiltonian reduction for affine Grassmannian slices and truncated shifted Yangians

Generalized affine Grassmannian slices provide geometric realizations for weight spaces of representations of semisimple Lie algebras. They are also Coulomb branches, symplectic dual to Nakajima quiver varieties. In this paper, we prove that neighboring generalized affine Grassmannian slices are related by Hamiltonian reduction by the action of the additive group. We also prove a weaker version of the same result for their quantizations, algebras known as truncated shifted Yangians.

Perverse 𝔽 p -sheaves on the affine Grassmannian

Abstract For a reductive group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p > 0 {p>0} we construct the abelian category of perverse 𝔽 p {\mathbb{F}_{p}} -sheaves on the affine Grassmannian that are equivariant with respect to the action of the positive loop group. We show this is a symmetric monoidal category, and then we apply a Tannakian formalism to show this category is equivalent to the category of representations of a certain affine monoid scheme. We also show that our work provides a geometrization of the inverse of the mod p Satake isomorphism. Along the way we prove that affine Schubert varieties are globally F-regular and we apply Frobenius splitting techniques to the theory of perverse 𝔽 p {\mathbb{F}_{p}} -sheaves.

Extending torsors on the punctured Spec(A inf)

Abstract We prove that torsors under parahoric group schemes on the punctured spectrum of Fontaine’s ring A inf {A_{\mathrm{inf}}} , extend to the whole spectrum. Using descent we can extend a similar result for the ring 𝔖 {\mathfrak{S}} of Kisin and Pappas to full generality. Moreover, we treat similarly the case of equal characteristic. As applications we extend results of Ivanov on exactness of the loop functor and present the construction of a canonical specialization map from the B dR + {B^{+}_{\mathrm{dR}}} -affine Grassmannian to the Witt vector affine flag variety.

Affine Beilinson-Bernstein localization at the critical level for $\mathrm{GL}_2$

We prove the rank 1 case of a conjecture of Frenkel-Gaitsgory: critical level Kac-Moody representations with regular central characters localize onto the affine Grassmannian. The method uses an analogue in local geometric Langlands of the existence of Whittaker models for most representations of $\mathrm{GL}_2$ over a non-Archimedean field.

Local operators of $4d \mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories from the affine Grassmannian

Local operators of $4d \mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories from the affine Grassmannian

Orthosymplectic Satake equivalence

This is a companion paper of arXiv:1909.11492. We prove an equivalence relating representations of a degenerate orthosymplectic supergroup with the category of $SO(N-1,{\mathbb C}[\![t]\!])$-equivariant perverse sheaves on the affine Grassmannian of $SO_N$. We explain how this equivalence fits into a more general framework of conjectures due to Gaiotto and to Ben-Zvi, Sakellaridis and Venkatesh.

Shadows in the Wild - Folded Galleries and Their Applications

This survey is about combinatorial objects related to reflection groups and their applications in representation theory and arithmetic geometry. Coxeter groups and folded galleries in Coxeter complexes are introduced in detail and illustrated by examples. Further it is explained how they relate to retractions in Bruhat-Tits buildings and to the geometry of affine flag varieties and affine Grassmannians. The goal is to make these topics accessible to a wide audience.

Coulomb branches of quiver gauge theories with symmetrizers

We generalize the mathematical definition of Coulomb branches of 3 -dimensional \mathcal N= 4 SUSY quiver gauge theories due to Nakajima (2016) and Braverman et al. (2018, 2019) to the cases with symmetrizers . We obtain generalized affine Grassmannian slices of type BCFG as examples of the construction, and their deformation quantizations via truncated shifted Yangians. Finally, we study modules over these quantizations and relate them to the lower triangular part of the quantized enveloping algebra of type ADE .

Steenrod operators, the Coulomb branch and the Frobenius twist

AbstractWe observe a fundamental relationship between Steenrod operations and the Artin–Schreier morphism. We use Steenrod's construction, together with some new geometry related to the affine Grassmannian, to prove that the quantum Coulomb branch is a Frobenius-constant quantization. We also demonstrate the corresponding result for the $K$-theoretic version of the quantum Coulomb branch. At the end of the paper, we investigate what our ideas produce on the categorical level. We find that they yield, after a little fiddling, a construction which corresponds, under the geometric Satake equivalence, to the Frobenius twist functor for representations of the Langlands dual group. We also describe the unfiddled answer, conditional on a conjectural ‘modular derived Satake’, and, though it is more complicated to state, it is in our opinion just as neat and even more compelling.

An Affine Approach to Peterson Comparison

The Peterson comparison formula proved by Woodward relates the three-pointed Gromov-Witten invariants for the quantum cohomology of partial flag varieties to those for the complete flag. Another such comparison can be obtained by composing a combinatorial version of the Peterson isomorphism with a result of Lapointe and Morse relating quantum Littlewood-Richardson coefficients for the Grassmannian to k-Schur analogs in the homology of the affine Grassmannian obtained by adding rim hooks. We show that these comparisons on quantum cohomology are equivalent, up to Postnikov’s strange duality isomorphism.

Mirabolic Satake equivalence and supergroups

We construct a mirabolic analogue of the geometric Satake equivalence. We also prove an equivalence that relates representations of a supergroup to the category of $\operatorname{GL}(N-1,{\mathbb {C}}[\![t]\!])$-equivariant perverse sheaves on the affine Grassmannian of $\operatorname{GL}_N$. We explain how our equivalences fit into a more general framework of conjectures due to Gaiotto and to Ben-Zvi, Sakellaridis and Venkatesh.

Chiral principal series categories I: Finite dimensional calculations

This paper begins a series studying D-modules on the Feigin-Frenkel semi-infinite flag variety from the perspective of the Beilinson-Drinfeld factorization (or chiral) theory.Here we calculate Whittaker-twisted cohomology groups of Zastava spaces, which are certain finite-dimensional subvarieties of the affine Grassmannian. We show that such cohomology groups realize the nilradical of a Borel subalgebra for the Langlands dual group in a precise sense, following earlier work of Feigin-Finkelberg-Kuznetsov-Mirkovic and Braverman-Gaitsgory. Moreover, we compare this geometric realization of the Langlands dual group to the standard one provided by (factorizable) geometric Satake.

Rozansky-Witten geometry of Coulomb branches and logarithmic knot invariants

By studying Rozansky-Witten theory with non-compact target spaces we find new connections with knot invariants whose physical interpretation was not known. This opens up several new avenues, which include a new formulation of q-series invariants of 3-manifolds in terms of affine Grassmannians and a generalization of Akutsu-Deguchi-Ohtsuki knot invariants.

Tate motives on Witt vector affine flag varieties

Relying on recent advances in the theory of motives we develop a general formalism for derived categories of motives with {mathbf{Q}}-coefficients on perfect infty -prestacks. We construct Grothendieck’s six functors for motives over perfect (ind-)schemes perfectly of finite presentation. Following ideas of Soergel–Wendt, this is used to study basic properties of stratified Tate motives on Witt vector partial affine flag varieties. As an application we give a motivic refinement of Zhu’s geometric Satake equivalence for Witt vector affine Grassmannians in this set-up.