An affine deformation of the quantum cohomology ring of flag manifolds and periodic Toda lattice

Abstract: Consider the generalized flag manifold $G/B$ and the corresponding affine flag manifold $\mathcal{Fl}G$. In this paper we use curve neighborhoods for Schubert varieties in $\mathcal{Fl}_G$ to construct certain affine Gromov-Witten invariants of $\mathcal{Fl}_G$, and to obtain a family of "affine quantum Chevalley" operators $\Lambda_0, \ldots, \Lambda_n$ indexed by the simple roots in the affine root system of $G$. These operators act on the cohomology ring $\mathrm{H}^*(\mathcal{Fl}_G)$ with coefficients in $\mathbb{Z}[q_0, \ldots,q_n]$. By analyzing commutativity and invariance properties of these operators we deduce the existence of two quantum cohomology rings, which satisfy properties conjectured earlier by Guest and Otofuji for $G= \mathrm{SL}_n(\mathbb{C})$. The first quantum ring is a deformation of the subalgebra of $\mathrm{H}^*(\mathcal{Fl}_G)$ generated by divisors. The second ring, denoted $\mathrm{QH}^*{\mathrm{af}}(G/B)$, deforms the ordinary quantum cohomology ring $\mathrm{QH}^*(G/B)$ by adding an affine quantum parameter $q_0$. We prove that $\mathrm{QH}^*_{\mathrm{af}}(G/B)$ is a Frobenius algebra, and that the new quantum product determines a flat Dubrovin connection. Further, we develop an analogue of Givental and Kim formalism for this ring and we deduce a presentation of $\mathrm{QH}^*_{\mathrm{af}}(G/B)$ by generators and relations. The ideal of relations is generated by the integrals of motion for the periodic Toda lattice associated to the dual of the extended Dynkin diagram of $G$.