Chevalley formulae for the motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells and for the stable envelopes

We prove a Chevalley formula to multiply the motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells in a generalized flag manifold $G/P$ by the class of any line bundle $\mathcal{L}_λ$. Our formula is given in terms of the $λ$-chains of Lenart and Postnikov. Its proof relies on a change of basis formula in the affine Hecke algebra due to Ram, and on the Hecke algebra action on torus-equivariant K-theory of the complete flag manifold $G/B$ via left Demazure–Lusztig operators. We revisit some wall-crossing formulae for the stable envelopes in $T^(G/B)$. We use our Chevalley formula, and the equivalence between motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells and K-theoretic stable envelopes in $T^(G/B)$, to give formulae for the change of polarization, and for the change of slope for stable envelopes. We prove several additional applications, including Serre, star, and Dynkin, dualities of the Chevalley coefficients, new formulae for the Whittaker functions, and for the Hall–Littlewood polynomials. We also discuss positivity properties of Chevalley coefficients, and properties of the coefficients arising from multiplication by minuscule weights.

💡 Research Summary

The paper establishes a Chevalley formula for multiplying the motivic Chern classes of Schubert cells in a generalized flag manifold (G/P) by any line bundle (\mathcal L_\lambda). The authors express the resulting coefficients in terms of Lenart–Postnikov’s (\lambda)-chains, a combinatorial model originally introduced to study equivariant K‑theory of flag varieties. The proof hinges on a change‑of‑basis formula in the affine Hecke algebra due to Ram, together with the action of left Demazure–Lusztig operators on the torus‑equivariant K‑theory of the complete flag manifold (G/B).

The motivic Chern class (MC_y(X(w)^\circ)) is defined by Brasselet‑Schürmann‑Yokura and depends on a formal parameter (y). Specializations at (y=0) and (y=-1) recover, respectively, the class of the ideal sheaf of the Schubert variety’s boundary and the class of the unique torus‑fixed point in the cell. The authors show that these classes can be generated recursively by Demazure–Lusztig operators: (MC_y(X(w)^\circ)=T^{L}_w