An additive basis for the cohomology rings of regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties (Q6155897)

Let \(G\) be a semisimple linear algebraic group. Fix a Borel subgroup \(B\) of \(G\). Let \(\mathfrak{g}\) and \(\mathfrak{b}\) denote the Lie algebras of \(G\) and \(B\), respectively. A Hessenberg space in \(\mathfrak{g}\) is a \(\mathfrak{b}\)-submodule \(H \subseteq \mathfrak{g}\) such that \(\mathfrak{b}\subseteq H\). Let \(I\) be a lower ideal of the natural poset structure on the system of positive roots \(\Phi^+\). Here, \(\Phi\) is the root system determined by the triplet \((G,B,T\)), where \(T\) is a maximal torus contained in \(B\). It is not difficult to see that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the Hessenberg spaces and the lower ideals of \(\Phi^+\), so we write \(H(I)\) in place of a Hessenberg space. For \(X\in \mathfrak{g}\) and a lower ideal \(I \subseteq \Phi^+\), the associated Hessenberg variety is the closed subset of the flag variety defined as follows: \begin{align*} \mathrm{Hess}(X,I) := \{ gB \in G/B \mid \mathrm{Ad}(g^{-1})(X) \in H(I) \}. \end{align*} The main focus of this well-written article is on the Hessenberg varieties \(\mathrm{Hess}(X,I)\), where \(X\) is a regular nilpotent element of \(\mathfrak{g}\). This means that the dimension of the adjoint orbit \(\mathrm{Ad}(G) (X)\) attains the maximum possible value. In this case, the Hessenberg variety is said to be regular nilpotent. Let \(\alpha\) be a positive root, viewed as a character of \(T\). It defines a line bundle on \(G/B\), denoted by \(L_\alpha\). It is a well-known result of Borel that the cohomology ring of \(G/B\) is generated by the Chern classes of these line bundles. Recently, it is proved in [\textit{T. Abe} et al., J. Reine Angew. Math. 764, 241--286 (2020; Zbl 1510.14033)] that the restrictions of these Chern classes to a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety \(\mathrm{Hess}(X,I)\) generate the cohomology of \(\mathrm{Hess}(X,I)\) (with real coefficients) as well. In this context, the first main theorem of the paper is as follows. {Theorem 1.} Let \(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h)\) be a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety of types \(\mathrm{A,B,C,G}\) of rank \(n\) We fix a permutation \(w^{(i)}\) on a set \(\{i+1, i+2, \dots, h(i) \}\) for each \(i=1,\dots, n\). Then the following equations cohomology classes \[ \prod_{i=1}^n \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i))} \cdot \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-1)} \cdots \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-m_i+1)},\tag{T1} \] with \(0\leq m_i \leq h(i)-i\), form an additive basis for the cohomology \(H^*(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h))\) over \(\mathbb{R}\). Here, we take convention \(\alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i))} \cdot \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-1)} \cdots \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-m_i+1)}=1\) whenever \(m_i=0\). The \(\alpha_{i,j}\) in (T1) denotes a positive root. For type \(\mathrm{D}\), the authors present the following result. {Theorem 2.} Let \(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h)\) be a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety of type \(\mathrm{D}\) of rank \(n\). Then, the following cohomology classes \begin{align*} \prod_{i=1}^n \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i))}^{(h-m)} \cdot \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-1)}^{(h-m)} \cdots \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-m_i+1)}^{(h-m)}, \end{align*} with \(0\leq m_i \leq h(i)-i\), form an additive basis for the cohomology \(H^*(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h))\) over \(\mathbb{R}\). Here, we take convention \(\alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i))}^{(h-m)} \cdot \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-1)}^{(h-m)} \cdots \alpha_{i, w^{(i)}(h(i)-m_i+1)}^{(h-m)}=1\) whenever \(m_i=0\). The authors discover a very interesting fact about the Poincaré duals of the classes of lower-dimensional regular nilpotent Hessenberg varieties in \(H^*(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h))\). The third main result of the article is presented as follows. {Theorem 3.} Let \(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h)\) be a regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety of types \(\mathrm{A}_n\),\(\mathrm{B}_n\),\(\mathrm{C}_n\),\(\mathrm{D}_n\), \(\mathrm{E}_6\), \(\mathrm{F}_4\), \(\mathrm{G}_2\). Then, the set \(\{ [\mathrm{Hess}(N,h')] \in H^*(\mathrm{Hess}(N,h)) \mid h'\subset h \}\) of the Poincaré duals is linearly independent.