Schubert calculus and torsion explosion

Geordie Williamson

Published 2013-09-19, updated 2015-04-24Version 2

We observe that certain numbers occurring in Schubert calculus for SL_n also occur as entries in intersection forms controlling decompositions of Soergel bimodules and parity sheaves in higher rank. These numbers grow exponentially. This observation gives many counterexamples to Lusztig's conjecture on the characters of simple rational modules for SL_n over a field of positive characteristic. We explain why our examples also give counter-examples to the James conjecture on decomposition numbers for symmetric groups.