February 1, 2007
Matroid Strata, Grassmannians, and Total Positivity
Kelli Talaska

We will present the matroid strata refinement of the Schubert cell decomposition of the Grassmannian. We can then define the totally nonnegative Grassmannian and give a further refinement into totally nonnegative Grassmann cells, which are geometrically simpler than the matroid strata. Finally, we will establish a relationship between these ideas and the classical totally nonnegative matrices.