Affine insertion and Pieri rules for the affine Grassmannian

TL;DR

This paper develops combinatorial rules and a new insertion algorithm for the affine Grassmannian's Schubert calculus, linking algebraic geometry with combinatorics through affine insertion and k-Schur functions.

Contribution

It introduces Pieri rules for affine Grassmannian Schubert classes, a new combinatorial definition of k-Schur functions, and a novel affine insertion algorithm generalizing Robinson-Schensted.

Findings

Pieri rules for H^*(Gr) and H_*(Gr)

A new combinatorial definition for k-Schur functions

A combinatorial interpretation of the homology-cohomology pairing

Abstract

We study combinatorial aspects of the Schubert calculus of the affine Grassmannian Gr associated with SL(n,C). Our main results are: 1) Pieri rules for the Schubert bases of H^*(Gr) and H_*(Gr), which expresses the product of a special Schubert class and an arbitrary Schubert class in terms of Schubert classes. 2) A new combinatorial definition for k-Schur functions, which represent the Schubert basis of H_*(Gr). 3) A combinatorial interpretation of the pairing between homology and cohomology of the affine Grassmannian. These results are obtained by interpreting the Schubert bases of Gr combinatorially as generating functions of objects we call strong and weak tableaux, which are respectively defined using the strong and weak orders on the affine symmetric group. We define a bijection called affine insertion, generalizing the Robinson-Schensted Knuth correspondence, which sends certain biwords to pairs of tableaux of the same shape, one strong and one weak. Affine insertion offers a duality between the weak and strong orders which does not seem to have been noticed previously. Our cohomology Pieri rule conjecturally extends to the affine flag manifold, and we give a series of related combinatorial conjectures.