On the cohomology rings of real flag manifolds: Schubert cycles (Q832492)

The authors study the integer and rational coefficient cohomology of real partial flag manifolds. They give an algorithm to compute the integer cohomology groups of any real partial flag manifold, by computing the incidence coefficients of the Schubert cells. Real flag manifolds also have a cell decomposition, however the boundary maps are no longer trivial. For even flag manifolds they determine the integer cohomology groups, by proving that any torsion class has order \(2\). Also they conjecture that this holds for any real flag manifold. They obtain results concerning which Schubert varieties represent integer cohomology classes, their structure constants and how to express them in terms of characteristic classes. For even flag manifolds and Grassmannians they also describe Schubert calculus. The Schubert calculus can be used to obtain lower bounds for certain real enumerative geometry problems.