In this paper we consider certain closed subvarieties of the flag variety, known as Hessenberg varieties. We give a connectedness criterion for semisimple Hessenberg varieties generalizing a criterion given by Anderson and Tymoczko. We show that nilpotent Hessenberg varieties are rationally connected.
This paper studies the geometry and combinatorics of three interrelated varieties: Springer fibers, Steinberg varieties, and parabolic Hessenberg varieties. We prove that each parabolic Hessenberg variety is the pullback of a Steinberg variety under the projection of the flag variety to an appropriate partial flag variety and we give three applications of this result. The first application constructs an explicit paving of all Steinberg varieties in Lie type $A$ in terms of semistandard tableaux. As a result, we obtain an elementary proof of a theorem of Steinberg and Shimomura that the well-known Kostka numbers count the maximal-dimensional irreducible components of Steinberg varieties. The second application proves an open conjecture for certain parabolic Hessenberg varieties in Lie type A by showing that their Betti numbers equal those of a specific union of Schubert varieties. The third application proves that the irreducible components of parabolic Hessenberg varieties are in bijection with the irreducible components of the Steinberg variety. All three of these applications extend our geometric understanding of the three varieties at the heart of this paper, a full understanding of which is unknown even for Springer varieties, despite over forty years worth of work.
We give a criterion which determines when a union of one-dimensional Deligne-Lusztig varieties has a connected closure. We also obtain a new, short proof of the connectedness criterion for Deligne-Lusztig varieties due to Lusztig.
Although regular semisimple Hessenberg varieties are smooth and irreducible, semisimple Hessenberg varieties are not necessarily smooth in general. In this paper we determine the irreducible components of semisimple Hessenberg varieties corresponding to the standard Hessenberg space. We prove that these irreducible components are smooth and give an explicit description of their intersections, which constitute the singular locus. We conclude with an example of a semisimple Hessenberg variety corresponding to another Hessenberg space which is singular and irreducible, showing that results of this nature do not hold for all semisimple Hessenberg varieties.
We show that the Kisin varieties associated to simple $phi$-modules of rank $2$ are connected in the case of an arbitrary cocharacter. This proves that the connected components of the generic fiber of the flat deformation ring of an irreducible $2$-dimensional Galois representation of a local field are precisely the components where the multiplicities of the Hodge-Tate weights are fixed.
Given a semisimple complex linear algebraic group $G$ and a lower ideal $I$ in positive roots of $G$, three objects arise: the ideal arrangement $mathcal{A}_I$, the regular nilpotent Hessenberg variety $mbox{Hess}(N,I)$, and the regular semisimple Hessenberg variety $mbox{Hess}(S,I)$. We show that a certain graded ring derived from the logarithmic derivation module of $mathcal{A}_I$ is isomorphic to $H^*(mbox{Hess}(N,I))$ and $H^*(mbox{Hess}(S,I))^W$, the invariants in $H^*(mbox{Hess}(S,I))$ under an action of the Weyl group $W$ of $G$. This isomorphism is shown for general Lie type, and generalizes Borels celebrated theorem showing that the coinvariant algebra of $W$ is isomorphic to the cohomology ring of the flag variety $G/B$. This surprising connection between Hessenberg varieties and hyperplane arrangements enables us to produce a number of interesting consequences. For instance, the surjectivity of the restriction map $H^*(G/B)to H^*(mbox{Hess}(N,I))$ announced by Dale Peterson and an affirmative answer to a conjecture of Sommers-Tymoczko are immediate consequences. We also give an explicit ring presentation of $H^*(mbox{Hess}(N,I))$ in types $B$, $C$, and $G$. Such a presentation was already known in type $A$ or when $mbox{Hess}(N,I)$ is the Peterson variety. Moreover, we find the volume polynomial of $mbox{Hess}(N,I)$ and see that the hard Lefschetz property and the Hodge-Riemann relations hold for $mbox{Hess}(N,I)$, despite the fact that it is a singular variety in general.