On explicit formulas for Grassmannian polylogarithms and Gelfand-MacPherson forms

Abstract

We answer a question of Goncharov by showing that his Grassmannian $n$-logarithm can be recovered by integrating the Borel invariant form on the symmetric space $\mathrm{SL}_{n}(\mathbf{C})/\mathrm{SU}(n)$ over a naturally defined ideal simplex. As corollaries, we recover the finiteness of primitive canonical integrals of Brown and the evaluation for wheel graphs of Brown and Schnetz. We also compute explicitly the Gelfand-MacPherson forms for powers of the first Pontryagin class and give a general integral formula for the Gelfand-MacPherson forms associated to each component of the Pontryagin character.