SAGBI bases and Degeneration of Spherical Varieties to Toric Varieties

Let X \subset Proj(V) be a projective spherical G-variety, where V is a finite dimensional G-module and G = SP(2n, C). In this paper, we show that X can be deformed, by a flat deformation, to the toric variety corresponding to a convex polytope \Delta(X). The polytope \Delta(X) is the polytope fibred over the moment polytope of X with the Gelfand-Cetlin polytopes as fibres. We prove this by showing that if X is a horospherical variety, e.g. flag varieties and Grassmanians, the homogeneous coordinate ring of X can be embedded in a Laurent polynomial algebra and has a SAGBI basis with respect to a natural term order. Moreover, we show that the semi-group of initial terms, after a linear change of variables, is the semi-group of integral points in the cone over the polytope \Delta(X). The results of this paper are true for other classical groups, provided that a result of A. Okounkov on the representation theory of SP(2n,C) is shown to hold for other classical groups.