Schubert varieties and free braidedness (Q1770199)

The authors give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for a Schubert variety \(X_w\), to be smooth when \(w\) is a freely braided element of a simply laced Weyl group; such elements were introduced by the authors in a previous work [Ann. Comb. 6, No. 3--4, 337--348 (2002; Zbl 1052.20028)]. This generalizes in one direction a result of \textit{C.~K.~Fan} [Transform. Groups 3, No. 1, 51--56 (1998; Zbl 0912.20033)] concerning varieties indexed by short-braid avoiding elements. They also derive generating functions for the freely braided elements that index smooth Schubert varieties. All results are stated and proved only for the simply laced case.