Knuth relations, tableaux and MV-cycles

Abstract

We give a geometric interpretation of the Knuth equivalence relations in terms of the affine Gra{\ss} mann variety. The Young tableaux are seen as sequences of coweights, called galleries. We show that to any gallery corresponds a Mirkovi\'c-Vilonen cycle and that two galleries are equivalent if, and only if, their associated MV cycles are equal. Words are naturally identified to some galleries. So, as a corollary, we obtain that two words are Knuth equivalent if, and only if, their associated MV cycles are equal.