English

Interlacing triangles, Schubert puzzles, and graph colorings

Combinatorics 2025-05-06 v2 Algebraic Geometry Probability

Abstract

We show that interlacing triangular arrays, introduced by Aggarwal-Borodin-Wheeler to study certain probability measures, can be used to compute structure constants for multiplying Schubert classes in the KK-theory of Grassmannians, in the cohomology of their cotangent bundles, and in the cohomology of partial flag varieties. Our results are achieved by establishing a splitting lemma, allowing for interlacing triangular arrays of high rank to be decomposed into arrays of lower rank, and by constructing a bijection between interlacing triangular arrays of rank 3 with certain proper vertex colorings of the triangular grid graph that factors through generalizations of Knutson-Tao puzzles. Along the way, we prove one enumerative conjecture of Aggarwal-Borodin-Wheeler and disprove another.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.07863,
  title  = {Interlacing triangles, Schubert puzzles, and graph colorings},
  author = {Christian Gaetz and Yibo Gao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.07863},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

v2: final version, to appear in Communications in Mathematical Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:13:19.678Z