Newton-Okounkov bodies of Bott-Samelson varieties and Grossberg-Karshon twisted cubes

Abstract: We describe, under certain conditions, the Newton-Okounkov body of a Bott-Samelson variety as a lattice polytope defined by an explicit list of inequalities. The valuation that we use to define the Newton-Okounkov body is different from that used previously in the literature. The polytope that arises is a special case of the Grossberg-Karshon twisted cubes studied by Grossberg and Karshon in connection to character formulae for irreducible $G$-representations and also studied previously by the authors in relation to certain toric varieties associated to Bott-Samelson varieties.