Affineness of Deligne-Lusztig varieties for minimal length elements

Abstract

We prove that the Deligne-Lusztig varieties associated to elements of the Weyl group which are of minimal length in their twisted class are affine. Our proof differs from the proof of He and Orlik-Rapoport and it is inspired by the case of regular elements, which correspond to the varieties involved in Brou\'e's conjectures.