arXiv subjects

Sara C. Billey

Publications and source records attributed to Sara C. Billey.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Affine partitions and affine Grassmannians

We give a bijection between certain colored partitions and the elements in the quotient of an affine Weyl group modulo its Weyl group. By Bott's formula these colored partitions give rise to some partition identities. In certain types, these identities have previously appeared in the work of Bousquet-Melou-Eriksson, Eriksson-Eriksson and Reiner. In other types the identities appear to be new. For type $A_{n}$, the affine colored partitions form another family of combinatorial objects in bijection with $n+1$-core partitions and $n$-bounded partitions. Our main application is to characterize the rationally smooth Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannians in terms of affine partitions and a generalization of Young's lattice which refines weak order and is a subposet of Bruhat order. Several of the proofs are computer assisted.

math.CO↗

arXiv2007

Smooth and palindromic Schubert varieties in affine Grassmannians

Let G be a simply-connected simple compact Lie group over the complex numbers. The affine Grassmannian is a projective ind-variety, homotopy-equivalent to the loop space of G and closely analogous to a maximal flag variety of the classical Grassmannian manifold. It has a Schubert cell decomposition indexed by the coroot lattice or equivalently by the minimal length coset representatives for the affine Weyl group modulo the Weyl group for G. The closure of an affine Schubert cell is a finite dimensional projective variety that we call an affine Schubert variety. In this paper we completely determine the smooth and palindromic (rationally smooth) affine Schubert varieties.

math.AG↗

arXiv2007

Embedded factor patterns for Deodhar elements in Kazhdan-Lusztig theory

The Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials for finite Weyl groups arise in the geometry of Schubert varieties and representation theory. It was proved very soon after their introduction that they have nonnegative integer coefficients, but no completely combinatorial interpretation for them is known in general. Deodhar (1990) has given a framework for computing the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, which generally involves recursion. We define embedded factor pattern avoidance for general Coxeter groups and use it to characterize when Deodhar's algorithm yields a simple combinatorial formula for the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials of finite Weyl groups. Equivalently, if $(W, S)$ is a Coxeter system for a finite Weyl group, we classify the elements $w \in W$ for which the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis element $C'_w$ can be written as a monomial of $C'_s$ where $s \in S$. This work generalizes results of Billey-Warrington (2001) which identified the Deodhar elements in type $A$ as 321-hexagon-avoiding permutations, and Fan-Green (1997) which identified the fully-tight Coxeter groups.

math.CO↗

arXiv2001

Maximal singular loci of Schubert varieties in SL(n)/B

We give an explicit combinatorial description of the irreducible components of the singular locus of the Schubert variety X_w for any element w in S_n. Our description of the irreducible components is computationally more efficient (O(n^6)) than the previously best known algorithms. This result proves a conjecture of Lakshmibai and Sandhya regarding this singular locus. Furthermore, we give simple formulas for calculating the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials at the maximum singular points.

math.AG↗

arXiv2000

Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials for 321-hexagon-avoiding permutations

We give a combinatorial formula for the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials $P_{x,w}$ in the symmetric group when $w$ is a 321-hexagon-avoiding permutation. Our formula, which depends on a combinatorial framework developed by Deodhar, can be expressed in terms of a simple statistic on all subexpressions of any fixed reduced expression for $w$. We also show that $w$ being 321-hexagon-avoiding is equivalent to several other conditions, such as the Bott-Samelson resolution of the Schubert variety $X_w$ being small. We conclude with a simple method for completely determining the singular locus of $X_w$ when $w$ is 321-hexagon-avoiding.

math.CO↗