Generalized Eulerian numbers and the topology of the Hessenberg variety of a matrix

Let Agl(n, C) and let p be a positive integer. The Hessenberg variety of degree p for A is the subvariety Hess(p, A) of the complete flag manifold consisting of those flags S ₁ S _n–1 in ⁿ which satisfy the condition AS _i S _i+p ,for all i. We show that if A has distinct eigenvalues, then Hess(p, A) is smooth and connected. The odd Betti numbers of Hess(p, A) vanish, while the even Betti numbers are given by a natural generalization of the Eulerian numbers. In the case where the eigenvalues of A have distinct moduli, |₁|<<|₁|, these results are applied to determine the dimension and topology of the submanifold of U(n) consisting of those unitary matrices P for which A ₀=P ^-1 AP is in Hessenberg form and for which the diagonal entries of the QR-iteration initialized at A ₀ converge to a given permutation of ₁,_n.Research partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ECS-8696108.