Splitting the cohomology of Hessenberg varieties and e-positivity of chromatic symmetric functions

Abstract: For each indifference graph, there is an associated regular semisimple Hessenberg variety, whose cohomology recovers the chromatic symmetric function of the graph. The decomposition theorem applied to the forgetful map from the regular semisimple Hessenberg variety to the projective space describes the cohomology of the Hessenberg variety as a sum of smaller pieces. We give a combinatorial description of the Frobenius character of each piece. This provides a generalization of the symmetric functions attached to Stanley's local h-polynomials of the permutahedral variety to any Hessenberg variety. As a consequence, we can prove that the coefficient of $e_{\lambda}$, where $\lambda$ is any partition of length 2, in the e-expansion of the chromatic symmetric function of any indifference graph is non-negative.