Paper BOAT

Abstract

We derive a formula for computing the size of lower Bruhat intervals for elements in the dominant cone of an affine Weyl group of type $A$. This enumeration problem is reduced to counting lattice points in certain polyhedra. Our main tool is a decomposition -- or tiling -- of each interval into smaller, combinatorially tractable pieces, which we call paper boats. We also conjecture a generalization of this formula to all affine Weyl groups, restricted to elements in the lowest two-sided Kazhdan-Lusztig cell, which contains almost all of the elements.