The Full Symmetric Toda Flow and Intersections of Bruhat Cells

Abstract: In this short note we show that the Bruhat cells in real normal forms of semisimple Lie algebras enjoy the same property as their complex analogs: for any two elements $w$, $w'$ in the Weyl group $W(\mathfrak g)$, the corresponding real Bruhat cell $X_w$ intersects with the dual Bruhat cell $Y_{w'}$ iff $w\prec w'$ in the Bruhat order on $W(\mathfrak g)$. Here $\mathfrak g$ is a normal real form of a semisimple complex Lie algebra $\mathfrak g_\mathbb C$. Our reasoning is based on the properties of the Toda flows rather than on the analysis of the Weyl group action and geometric considerations.