Cohomology of Smooth Schubert Varieties in Partial Flag Manifolds

Abstract

The fact that smooth Schubert varieties in partial flag manifolds are iterated fiber bundles over Grassmannians is used to give a simple presentation for their integral cohomology ring, generalizing Borel's presentation for the cohomology of the partial flag manifold itself. More generally, such a presentation is shown to hold for a larger class of subvarieties of the partial flag manifolds (which are called subvarieties defined by inclusions). The Schubert varieties which lie within this larger class are characterized combinatorially by a pattern avoidance condition.