Small resolutions of Schubert varieties and Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials (Q1907056)

Recall that a resolution \(p:\widetilde X \to X\) of an irreducible complex projective variety \(X\) is said to be small if, for all \(i>0\), \(\text{codim}_X \{x\in X : \dim p^{-1} (x)\geq i\}>2i\). Let \(G=SO(2n)\) or \(Sp(2n)\) and let \(P_n\) be the maximal parabolic subgroup obtained by deleting the right end root (following the Bourbaki convention). In an earlier work, ``Small resolutions of Schubert varieties in symplectic and orthogonal Grassmannians'' in Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 30, No. 3, 443-458 (1994), the authors exhibited `Bott-Samleson type' small resolutions \(p:\widetilde X(\lambda) \to X(\lambda)\) of certain Schubert varieties \(X(\lambda)\) in \(G/P_n\). The authors, in the paper under review, give an inductive formula (following similar works of Zelevinskii in the case of Grassmannian Schubert varieties) to determine the Poincaré polynomials of the fibres of \(p\) over \(T\)-fixed points (where \(T\) is the maximal torus of \(G\) acting on \(G/P_n\) via the left multiplication). They use this result (and some results of Zelevinskii) to show that the Kazhdan-Lusztig (KL for short) polynomials \(P_{\theta, \lambda_0}\) (for the Weyl group associated to \(G)\), for certain pairs \(\theta\leq \lambda_0\), are equal to the KL-polynomials \(P_{\theta', \lambda_0'}'\) (where \(P'\) denotes the KL-polynomials for \(SL(M)\), for certain integer \(M\) and certain \(\theta'\leq \lambda_0'\) in the Weyl group of \(SL(M))\). The authors also exhibit small resolutions for certain Schubert varieties in \(E_6/P_6\) and calculate the Poincaré polynomials of the fibres over \(T\)-fixed points for them (where \(P_6\) is again the maximal parabolic subgroup obtained by deleting the right end root). In addition, they explicitly determine the singular locus for most of the Schubert varieties in \(E_6/P_6\).