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A Pattern Avoidance Characterization for Smoothness of Positroid Varieties

Positroids are certain representable matroids originally studied by Postnikov in connection with the totally nonnegative Grassmannian and now used widely in algebraic combinatorics. The positroids give rise to determinantal equations defining positroid varieties as subvarieties of the Grassmannian variety. Rietsch, Knutson-Lam-Speyer and Pawlowski studied geometric and cohomological properties of these varieties. In this paper, we continue the study of the geometric properties of positroid varieties by establishing several equivalent conditions characterizing smooth positroid varieties using a variation of pattern avoidance defined on decorated permutations, which are in bijection with positroids. Furthermore, we give a combinatorial method for determining the dimension of the tangent space of a positroid variety at key points using an induced subgraph of the Johnson graph. We also give a Bruhat interval characterization of positroids.