The Berenstein-Kirillov group and cactus groups

Abstract: Berenstein and Kirillov have studied the action of Bender-Knuth moves on semistandard tableaux. Losev has studied a cactus group action in Kazhdan-Lusztig theory; in type $A$ this action can also be identified in the work of Henriques and Kamnitzer. We establish the relationship between the two actions. We show that the Berenstein-Kirillov group is a quotient of the cactus group. We use this to derive previously unknown relations in the Berenstein-Kirillov group. We also determine precise implications between subsets of relations in the two groups, which yields a presentation for cactus groups in terms of Bender-Knuth generators.