Governing singularities of Schubert varieties (Q947480)

Let \(X_w\) be the Schubert subvariety of the complete flag variety associated to a permutation \(w\) in the symmetric group \(S_n\). It is important to know which \(X_w\) are singular and where \(X_w\) is singular. The authors survey many recent results concerning this problems. They introduce a new combinatorial notion, a generalization of pattern avoidance, which they call interval pattern avoidance, and use this to explore the singularities of Schubert varieties and their local invariants. In the last sections of the paper a computation approach to the problems based on the Macaulay 2 is discussed. The associated commutative algebra is that of Kazhdan-Lusztig ideals (a class of ideals generalizing classical determinantal ideals). The authors wrote the Macaulay 2 code Schubsingular as an exploratory complement to this paper. It is available at the authors' websites.