Automorphism group of a Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen variety

TL;DR

This paper computes the automorphism groups of Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen varieties associated with algebraic groups, revealing their structure, dependence on reduced expressions, and rigidity properties, especially for simply laced groups.

Contribution

It provides explicit descriptions of the connected automorphism groups of these varieties, characterizes when they contain certain subgroups, and explores their rigidity and deformation properties.

Findings

Aut^0(Z(w, i)) contains B iff w^{-1}(α_0)<0.

Aut^0(Z(w_0, i)) is a parabolic subgroup of G.

Varieties are rigid for simply laced groups and deformations are unobstructed.

Abstract

Let $G$ be a simple, adjoint, algebraic group over the field of complex numbers, $B$ be a Borel subgroup of $G$ containing a maximal torus $T$ of $G$, $w$ be an element of the Weyl group $W$ and $X(w)$ be the Schubert variety in $G/B$ corresponding to $w$. Let $Z(w,\underline i)$ be the Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen variety (the desingularization of the Schubert variety $X(w)$) corresponding to a reduced expression $\underline i$ of $w$. In this article, we compute the connected component $Aut^0(Z(w, \underline i))$ of the automorphism group of $Z(w,\underline i)$ containing the identity automorphism. We show that $Aut^0(Z(w, \underline i))$ contains a closed subgroup isomorphic to $B$ if and only if $w^{-1}(\alpha_0)<0$, where $\alpha_0$ is the highest root. If $w_0$ denotes the longest element of $W$, then we prove that $Aut^0(Z(w_0, \underline i))$ is a parabolic subgroup of $G$. It is also shown that this parabolic subgroup depends very much on the chosen reduced expression $\underline i$ of $w_0$ and we describe all parabolic subgroups of $G$ that occur as $Aut^0(Z(w_0, \underline i))$. If $G$ is simply laced, then we show that for every $w\in W$ and for every reduced expression $\underline i$ of $w$, $ Aut^0(Z(w, \underline i))$ is a quotient of the parabolic subgroup $Aut^0(Z(w_0, \underline j))$ of $G$ for a suitable choice of a reduced expression $\underline j$ of $w_0$. We also prove that the Bott-Samelson-Demazure-Hansen varieties are rigid for simply laced groups and their deformations are unobstructed in general.