Symmetric Functions, Schubert Polynomials and Degeneracy Loci

Book excerpt: This text grew out of an advanced course taught by the author at the Fourier Institute (Grenoble, France). It serves as an introduction to the combinatorics of symmetric functions, more precisely to Schur and Schubert polynomials. Also studied is the geometry of Grassmannians, flag varieties, and especially, their Schubert varieties. This book examines profound connections that unite these two subjects. The book is divided into three chapters. The first is devoted to symmetricfunctions and especially to Schur polynomials. These are polynomials with positive integer coefficients in which each of the monomials correspond to a Young tableau with the property of being ``semistandard''. The second chapter is devoted to Schubert polynomials, which were discovered by A. Lascoux andM.-P. Schutzenberger who deeply probed their combinatorial properties. It is shown, for example, that these polynomials support the subtle connections between problems of enumeration of reduced decompositions of permutations and the Littlewood-Richardson rule, a particularly efficacious version of which may be derived from these connections. The final chapter is geometric. It is devoted to Schubert varieties, subvarieties of Grassmannians, and flag varieties defined by certain incidenceconditions with fixed subspaces. This volume makes accessible a number of results, creating a solid stepping stone for scaling more ambitious heights in the area. The author's intent was to remain elementary: The first two chapters require no prior knowledge, the third chapter uses some rudimentary notionsof topology and algebraic geometry. For this reason, a comprehensive appendix on the topology of algebraic varieties is provided. This book is the English translation of a text previously published in French.