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

Abstract

Schubert varieties in the flag manifold SL(n)/B play a key role in our understanding of projective varieties. One important problem is to determine the locus of singular points in a variety. In 1990, Lakshmibai and Sandhya showed that the Schubert variety X w is nonsingular if and only if w avoids the patterns 4231 and 3412. They also gave a conjectural description of the singular locus of X w . In 1999, Gasharov proved one direction of their conjecture. In this paper we give an explicit combinatorial description of the irreducible components of the singular locus of the Schubert variety X w for any element w ∈ G n . In doing so, we prove both directions of the Lakshmibai-Sandhya conjecture. These irreducible components are indexed by permutations which differ from w by a cycle depending naturally on a 4231 or 3412 pattern in w. Our description of the irreducible components is computationally more efficient (O(n 6 )) than the previously best known algorithms, which were all exponential in time. Furthermore, we give simple formulas for calculating the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials at the maximum singular points.