Gelfand-Zetlin polytopes and flag varieties

Abstract

I construct a correspondence between the Schubert cycles on the variety of complete flags in C^n and some faces of the Gelfand-Zetlin polytope associated with the irreducible representation of SL_n(C) with a strictly dominant highest weight. The construction is based on a geometric presentation of Schubert cells by Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand using Demazure modules. The correspondence between the Schubert cycles and faces is then used to interpret the classical Chevalley formula in Schubert calculus in terms of the Gelfand-Zetlin polytopes. The whole picture resembles the picture for toric varieties and their polytopes.