Extremal Transition and Quantum Cohomology: Examples of Toric Degeneration
When a singular projective variety X_sing admits a projective crepant resolution X_res and a smoothing X_sm, we say that X_res and X_sm are related by extremal transition. In this paper, we study a relationship between the quantum cohomology of X_res and X_sm in some examples. For three dimensional conifold transition, a result of Li and Ruan implies that the quantum cohomology of a smoothing X_sm is isomorphic to a certain subquotient of the quantum cohomology of a resolution X_res with the quantum variables of exceptional curves specialized to one. We observe that similar phenomena happen for toric degenerations of Fl(1,2,3), Gr(2,4) and Gr(2,5) by explicit computations.