Generating the Ideals Defining Unions of Schubert Varieties

Abstract

This note computes a Gr\"obner basis for the ideal defining a union of Schubert varieties. More precisely, it computes a Gr\"obner basis for unions of schemes given by northwest rank conditions on the space of all matrices of a fixed size. Schemes given by northwest rank conditions include classical determinantal varieties and matrix Schubert varieties--closures of Schubert varieties lifted from the flag manifold to the space of matrices.