Betti numbers of Springer fibers in type \(A\) (Q5902564)

Consider a complex vector space \(V\) with nilpotent endomorphism \(u : V \to V\). Let \({\mathcal F}\) denote the variety of complete flags of \(V\). Consider the Springer fiber \({\mathcal F}_u\); the subvariety of \(u\)-stable complete flags. Of interest here is the dimension of the rational cohomology groups \(H^*({\mathcal F}_u,\mathbb{Q})\). It is known that the cohomology vanishes in odd degrees, so of particular interest are the even dimensions. From work of \textit{G. Lusztig} [Adv. Math. 42, 169--178 (1981; Zbl 0473.20029)], these could be computed by considering the cohomology groups as modules for a finite symmetric group and using certain Kostka polynomials. The goal of this paper is to provide a more direct computation. The approach taken here is to use the fact that if a projective variety \(X\) has a cell decomposition, then the dimension of the degree \(2m\) rational cohomology is simply the number of \(m\)-dimensional cells in the decomposition. It is known that the Springer fiber \({\mathcal F}_u\) admits a cell decomposition, however the known decompositions are not suitable in practice for making this computation. Generalizing a construction of [\textit{N. Spaltenstein}, Classes Unipotentes et Sous-Groupes de Borel. Lect. Notes Math 946, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (1982; Zbl 0486.20025)], the author constructs a new cell decomposition of \({\mathcal F}_u\). The cells are parameterized by row-standard tableaux of shape \(Y(u)\) where \(Y(u)\) is the Young diagram whose rows are the lengths of the Jordan blocks of \(u\) (in non-increasing order). Further, the co-dimension of a cell corresponding to a given tableaux is shown to be the number of so-called \textit{inversion pairs} found in the tableaux; something that is easily computable for a given example. Some explicit compuations and examples are given at the end of the paper.