Minimum distance and the minimum weight codewords of Schubert codes

We consider linear codes associated to Schubert varieties in Grassmannians. A formula for the minimum distance of these codes was conjectured in 2000 and after having been established in various special cases, it was proved in 2008 by Xiang. We give an alternative proof of this formula. Further, we propose a characterization of the minimum weight codewords of Schubert codes by introducing the notion of Schubert decomposable elements of certain exterior powers. It is shown that codewords corresponding to Schubert decomposable elements are of minimum weight and also that the converse is true in many cases. A lower bound, and in some cases, an exact formula, for the number of minimum weight codewords of Schubert codes is also given. From a geometric point of view, these results correspond to determining the maximum number of Fq-rational points that can lie on a hyperplane section of a Schubert variety in a Grassmannian with its nondegenerate embedding in a projective subspace of the Plücker projective space, and also the number of hyperplanes for which the maximum is attained.