Yangians and quantizations of slices in the affine Grassmannian

Abstract

We study quantizations of transverse slices to Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian. The quantization is constructed using quantum groups called shifted Yangians — these are subalgebras of the Yangian we introduce which generalize the Brundan–Kleshchev shifted Yangian to arbitrary type. Building on ideas of Gerasimov, Kharchev, Lebedev and Oblezin, we prove that a quotient of the shifted Yangian quantizes a scheme supported on the transverse slices, and we formulate a conjectural description of the defining ideal of these slices which implies that the scheme is reduced. This conjecture also implies the conjectural quantization of the Zastava spaces for PGL${}_n$ of Finkelberg and Rybnikov.