Chow Vanishing and Motives of Cluster Varieties

Abstract: We prove that the integral Chow groups $CH<sup>i$ and mixed Hodge degree $H^{2i, (i, i)}$ cohomology groups of really full rank (RFR) sink-recurrent cluster varieties vanish for $i &gt; 0$. In particular this applies to braid varieties and open Richardson varieties in any Lie type. Our main tool is the construction of a stratification of any RFR sink-recurrent cluster variety $\mathcal{A}(Σ)$ into (affine spaces times) RFR sink-recurrent cluster varieties of seeds with fewer mutable vertices than $Σ$. We employ the theory of Voevodsky motives, and towards this end we prove that the cycle class maps are isomorphisms onto the lowest-weight part of rational Borel-Moore homology for any mixed Tate variety over a number field. We then show that RFR sink-recurrent cluster varieties have mixed Tate and, in fact, split motives. Finally, we use our results to deduce vanishing theorems about the Khovanov-Rozansky homology groups of closures of positive braids and generation properties of the cohomology of closed Richardson, projected Richardson, and brick varieties.