Staircase diagrams and enumeration of smooth Schubert varieties

Abstract

We enumerate smooth and rationally smooth Schubert varieties in the classical finite types A, B, C, and D, extending Haiman's enumeration for type A. To do this enumeration, we introduce a notion of staircase diagrams on a graph. These combinatorial structures are collections of steps of irregular size, forming interconnected staircases over the given graph. Over a Dynkin–Coxeter graph, the set of “nearly-maximally labelled” staircase diagrams is in bijection with the set of Schubert varieties with a complete Billey–Postnikov (BP) decomposition. We can then use an earlier result of the authors showing that all finite-type rationally smooth Schubert varieties have a complete BP decomposition to finish the enumeration.