Shadows of characteristic cycles, Verma modules, and positivity of Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes of Schubert cells

Paolo Aluffi, Leonardo C. Mihalcea, Jörg Schürmann, Changjian Su

Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson (CSM) classes generalize to singular and/or noncompact varieties the classical total homology Chern class of the tangent bundle of a smooth compact complex manifold. The theory of CSM classes has been extended to the equivariant setting by Ohmoto. We prove that for an arbitrary complex algebraic manifold $X$, the homogenized, torus equivariant CSM class of a constructible function $\varphi$ is the restriction of the characteristic cycle of $\varphi$ via the zero section of the cotangent bundle of $X$. This extends to the equivariant setting results of Ginzburg and Sabbah. We specialize $X$ to be a (generalized) flag manifold $G/B$. In this case CSM classes are determined by a Demazure-Lusztig (DL) operator. We prove a `Hecke orthogonality' of CSM classes, determined by the DL operator and its Poincar{\'e} adjoint. We further use the theory of holonomic $\mathcal{D}_X$-modules to show that the characteristic cycle of the Verma module, restricted to the zero section, gives the CSM class of a Schubert cell. Since the Verma characteristic cycles naturally identify with the Maulik and Okounkov's stable envelopes, we establish an equivalence between CSM classes and stable envelopes; this reproves results of Rim{\'a}nyi and Varchenko. As an application, we obtain a Segre type formula for CSM classes. In the non-equivariant case this formula is manifestly positive, showing that the extension in the Schubert basis of the CSM class of a Schubert cell is effective. This proves a previous conjecture by Aluffi and Mihalcea, and it extends previous positivity results by J. Huh in the Grassmann manifold case. Finally, we generalize all of this to partial flag manifolds~$G/P$.