The ABC of \(p\)-cells (Q1987523)

The paper is dedicated to developing a positive characteristic version of the Kazhdan-Lusztig cells. In [Contemp. Math. 683, 333--361 (2017; Zbl 1390.20001)], the author and \textit{G. Williamson} defined the \(p\)-canonical basis for the Hecke algebra of a crystallographic Coxeter system. It can be thought of as a positive characteristic analogue of the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis. The \(p\)-canonical basis shares strong positivity properties with the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis (similar to the ones described by the Kazhdan-Lusztig positivity conjectures), but it loses many of its combinatorial properties. Replacing the Kazhdan-Lusztig basis by the \(p\)-canonical basis in the definition of the left (resp. right or two-sided) cells leads to the notion of left (resp. right or two-sided) p-cells. These \(p\)-cells are the main subject of the present paper. The first properties of \(p\)-cells are proved in Section 3. Left and right \(p\)-cells are related by taking inverses (see Lemma 3.6), just like for Kazhdan-Lusztig cells. The set of elements with a fixed left descent set decomposes into right \(p\)-cells (see Lemma 3.4). The most important result of this section is a certain compatibility of \(p\)-cells with parabolic subgroups that shows that any right \(p\)-cell preorder relation in a finite standard parabolic subgroup \(W_I\) induces right \(p\)-cell preorder relations in each right \(W_I\)-coset (see Theorem 3.9). It is also shown that unfortunately Kazhdan-Lusztig cells do not always decompose into \(p\)-cells, but the author expects that this may still be the case when the prime \(p\) is good for the corresponding algebraic group. Indeed, in Section 4 it is proved that Kazhdan-Lusztig left cells decompose into left \(p\)-cells in finite types B and C for \(p > 2\). This is done by studying the consequences of the Kazhdan-Lusztig star-operations for the \(p\)-canonical basis, these operations appear as the main technical tool of the present work.