Pfaffians and Shuffling Relations for the Spin Module

We present explicit formulas for a set of generators of the ideal of relations among the pfaffians of the principal minors of the antisymmetric matrices of fixed dimension. These formulas have an interpretation in terms of the standard monomial theory for the spin module of orthogonal groups.Comment: 10 page

The ring of sections of a complete symmetric variety

We study the ring of sections A(X) of a complete symmetric variety X, that is of the wonderful completion of G/H where G is an adjoint semi-simple group and H is the fixed subgroup for an involutorial automorphism of G. We find generators for Pic(X), we generalize the PRV conjecture to complete symmetric varieties and construct a standard monomial theory for A(X) that is compatible with G orbit closures in X. This gives a degeneration result and the rational singularityness for A(X).Comment: 15 pages, Late

Pl\:ucker relations and spherical varieties: application to model varieties

A general framework for the reduction of the equations defining classes of spherical varieties to (maybe infinite dimensional) grassmannians is proposed. This is applied to model varieties of type A, B and C; in particular a standard monomial theory for these varieties is presented.Comment: 15 pages, accepted for publication in Transformation Group

Equations defining symmetric varieties and affine Grassmannians

Let $\sigma$ be a simple involution of an algebraic semisimple group $G$ and let $H$ be the subgroup of $G$ of points fixed by $\sigma$. If the restricted root system is of type $A$, $C$ or $BC$ and $G$ is simply connected or if the restricted root system is of type $B$ and $G$ is adjoint, then we describe a standard monomial theory and the equations for the coordinate ring $k[G/H]$ using the standard monomial theory and the Pl\"ucker relations of an appropriate (maybe infinite dimensional) Grassmann variety.Comment: 48 page