Combinatorial identities and Chern numbers of complex flag manifolds

Abstract: We present in this article a family of new combinatorial identities via purely differential/complex geometry methods, which include as a speical case a unified and explicit formula for Chern numbers of all complex flag manifolds. Our strategy is to construct concrete circle actions with isolated fixed points on these manifolds and explicitly determine their weights. Then applying Bott's residue formula to these models yields the desired results.