Minuscule reverse plane partitions via quiver representations

Abstract

A nilpotent endomorphism of a quiver representation induces a linear transformation on the vector space at each vertex. Generically among all nilpotent endomorphisms, there is a well-defined Jordan form for these linear transformations, which is an interesting new invariant of a quiver representation. If Q is a Dynkin quiver and m is a minuscule vertex, we show that representations consisting of direct sums of indecomposable representations all including m in their support, the category of which we denote by $\mathcal C_{Q,m}$, are determined up to isomorphism by this invariant. We use this invariant to define a bijection from isomorphism classes of representations in $\mathcal C_{Q,m}$ to reverse plane partitions whose shape is the minuscule poset corresponding to Q and m. By relating the piecewise-linear promotion action on reverse plane partitions to Auslander–Reiten translation in the derived category, we give a uniform proof that the order of promotion equals the Coxeter number. In type $A_n$, we show that special cases of our bijection include the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth and Hillman–Grassl correspondences.