An update on Haiman's conjectures

Abstract

We revisit Haiman's conjecture on the relations between characters of Kazdhan-Lusztig basis elements of the Hecke algebra over the symmetric group. The conjecture asserts that, for purposes of character evaluation, any Kazhdan-Lusztig basis element is reducible to a sum of the simplest possible ones (those associated to so-called codominant permutations). When the basis element is associated to a smooth permutation, we are able to give a geometric proof of this conjecture. On the other hand, if the permutation is singular, we provide a counterexample.