The isomorphism problem for Grassmannian Schubert varieties

Abstract

We prove that Schubert varieties in potentially different Grassmannians are isomorphic as varieties if and only if their corresponding Young diagrams are identical up to a transposition. We also discuss a generalization of this result to Grassmannian Richardson varieties. In particular, we prove that Richardson varieties in potentially different Grassmannians are isomorphic as varieties if their corresponding skew diagrams are semi-isomorphic as posets, and we conjecture the converse. Here, two posets are said to be semi-isomorphic if there is a bijection between their sets of connected components such that the corresponding components are either isomorphic or opposite.