Generalized Eulerian numbers and the topology of the Hessenberg variety of a matrix (Q1113614)

It is shown that the Hessenberg variety of degree p for a matrix A is smooth and connected if A has distinct eigenvalues, and its Betti numbers are characterized. In the case when the eigenvalues of A have distinct moduli, these results are applied to determine the dimension and topology of the submanifold of U(n) consisting of those unitary matrices P for which \(A_ 0=P^{-1}AP\) is in Hessenberg form and for which the diagonal entries of the QR-iteration initialized at \(A_ 0\) converge to a given permutation of the eigenvalues.