Schubert varieties and free braidedness

Abstract

We give a simple necessary and sufficient condition for a Schubert variety $X_w$ to be smooth when $w$ is a freely braided element of a simply laced Weyl group; such elements were introduced by the authors in a previous work (math.CO/0301104). This generalizes in one direction a result of Fan concerning varieties indexed by short-braid avoiding elements. We also derive generating functions for the freely braided elements that index smooth Schubert varieties. All results are stated and proved only for the simply laced case.

15 pages, AMSTeX