Products of reflections in smooth Bruhat intervals

Abstract

A permutation is called smooth if the corresponding Schubert variety is smooth. Gilboa and Lapid prove that in the symmetric group, multiplying the reflections below a smooth element $w$ in Bruhat order in a compatible order yields back the element $w$. We strengthen this result by showing that such a product in fact determines a saturated chain $e \to w$ in Bruhat order, and that this property characterizes smooth elements.