Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4655622 | Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A | 2012 | 19 Pages |
Abstract
The spinor variety is cut out by the quadratic Wick relations among the principal Pfaffians of an n×n skew-symmetric matrix. Its points correspond to n-dimensional isotropic subspaces of a 2n-dimensional vector space. In this paper we tropicalize this picture, and we develop a combinatorial theory of tropical Wick vectors and tropical linear spaces that are tropically isotropic. We characterize tropical Wick vectors in terms of subdivisions of Δ-matroid polytopes, and we examine to what extent the Wick relations form a tropical basis. Our theory generalizes several results for tropical linear spaces and valuated matroids to the class of Coxeter matroids of type D.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Mathematics
Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics