Locally convex curves and the Bruhat stratification of the spin group (Q2040204)

The authors study the lifting of the Schubert stratification of the homogeneous space of complete real flags of \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\) to its universal covering group \(\mathrm{Spin}_{n+1}\). They call the lifted strata the Bruhat cells of \(\mathrm{Spin}_{n+1}\), in keeping with the homonymous classical decomposition of reductive algebraic groups. They present explicit parameterizations for these Bruhat cells in terms of minimal-length expressions \(\sigma = a_{i_1} \dots a_{i_k}\) for permutations \(\sigma \in S_{n+1}\) in terms of the n generators \(a_i = (i, i + 1)\). These parameterizations are compatible with the Bruhat orders in the Coxeter-Weyl group \(S{n+1}\). This stratification is an important tool in the study of locally convex curves; they present a few such applications.