Variants of geometric RSK, geometric PNG and the multipoint distribution of the log-gamma polymer

Abstract

We show that the reformulation of the geometric Robinson-Schensted-Knuth (gRSK) correspondence via local moves, introduced in \cite{OSZ14} can be extended to cases where the input matrix is replaced by more general polygonal, Young-diagram-like, arrays of the form $\polygon$. We also show that a rearrangement of the sequence of the local moves gives rise to a geometric version of the polynuclear growth model (PNG). These reformulations are used to obtain integral formulae for the Laplace transform of the joint distribution of the point-to-point partition functions of the log-gamma polymer at different space-time points. In the case of two points at equal time $N$ and space at distance of order $N^{2/3}$, we show formally that the joint law of the partition functions, scaled by $N^{1/3}$, converges to the two-point function of the Airy process

arXiv comment44 pages. Proposition 3.4 and Theorem 3.5 are now stated in a more general form and some more minor changes are made (most of them following suggestions by a referee). To appear at IMRN