Acyclic matchings on Bruhat intervals and applications to total positivity

Abstract

The existence of acyclic complete matchings on the face poset of a regular CW complex implies that the underlying topological space of the CW complex is contractible by discrete Morse theory. In this paper, we construct explicitly acyclic complete matchings on any non-trivial Bruhat interval $[v,w]$ based on any reflection order on the Coxeter group $W$. We then apply this combinatorial result to regular CW complexes arising from the theory of total positivity. As an application, we show that the totally nonnegative Springer fibers are contractible. This verifies a conjecture of Lusztig. As another application, we show that the totally nonnegative fibers of the natural projection from full flag varieties to partial flag varieties are contractible. This leads to a much simplified proof of the regularity property on totally nonnegative partial flag varieties compared to the proofs by Galashin-Karp-Lam and in our earlier work.