On some partitions of an affine flag variety

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss some partitions of affine flag varieties. These partitions include as special cases the partition of affine flag variety into affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties and the affine analogue of the partition of flag varieties into $\cb_w(b)$ introduced by Lusztig in \cite{L1} as part of the definition of character sheaves. Among other things, we give a formula for the dimension of affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties for classical loop groups in terms of degrees of class polynomials of extended affine Hecke algebra. We also prove that any simple $GL_n(\FF_q((\e)))$-module occurs as a subquotient of the cohomology of affine Deligne-Lusztig variety $X_w(1)$ for some $w$ in the extended affine Weyl group $\ZZ^n \rtimes S_n$ must occurs for some $w$ in the finite Weyl group $S_n$. Similar result holds for $Sp_{2n}$.