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Abstract

Much of modern Schubert calculus is centered on Schubert varieties in the complete flag variety and on their classes in its integral cohomology ring. Under the Borel isomorphism, these classes are represented by distinguished polynomials called Schubert polynomials, introduced by Lascoux and Sch\"utzenberger. Knutson and Miller showed that Schubert polynomials are multidegrees of matrix Schubert varieties, affine varieties introduced by Fulton, which are closely related to Schubert varieties. Many roads to studying Schubert polynomials pass through unions and intersections of matrix Schubert varieties. The third author showed that the natural indexing objects of arbitrary intersections of matrix Schubert varieties are alternating sign matrices (ASMs). Every ASM variety is expressible as a union of matrix Schubert varieties. Many fundamental algebro-geometric invariants (e.g., codimension, degree, and Castelnuovo--Mumford regularity) are well understood combinatorially for matrix Schubert varieties, substantially via the combinatorics of strong Bruhat order on $S_n$. The extension of strong order to ASM(n), the set of $n \times n$ ASMs, has so far not borne as much algebro-geometric fruit for ASM varieties. Hamaker and Reiner proposed an extension of weak Bruhat order from $S_n$ to ASM(n), which they studied from a combinatorial perspective. In the present paper, we place this work on algebro-geometric footing. We use weak order on ASMs to give a characterization of codimension of ASM varieties. We also show that weak order operators commute with K-theoretic divided difference operators and that they satisfy the same derivative formula that facilitated the first general combinatorial computation of Castelnuovo--Mumford regularity of matrix Schubert varieties. Finally, we build from these results to generalizations that apply to arbitrary unions of matrix Schubert varieties.