Staircase diagrams and enumeration of smooth Schubert varieties

Abstract: We enumerate smooth and rationally smooth Schubert varieties in the classical finite types A, B, C, and D, extending Haiman's enumeration for type A. To do this enumeration, we introduce a notion of staircase diagrams on a graph. These combinatorial structures are collections of steps of irregular size, forming interconnected staircases over the given graph. Over a Dynkin-Coxeter graph, the set of "nearly-maximally labelled" staircase diagrams is in bijection with the set of Schubert varieties with a complete Billey-Postnikov (BP) decomposition. We can then use an earlier result of the authors showing that all finite-type rationally smooth Schubert varieties have a complete BP decomposition to finish the enumeration.