Intersecting principal Bruhat ideals and grades of simple modules

We prove that the grades of simple modules indexed by boolean permutations, over the incidence algebra of the symmetric group with respect to the Bruhat order, are given by Lusztig's a-function. Our arguments are combinatorial, and include a description of the intersection of two principal order ideals when at least one permutation is boolean. An important object in our work is a reduced word written as minimally many runs of consecutive integers, and one step of our argument shows that this minimal quantity is equal to the length of the second row in the permutation's shape under the Robinson-Schensted correspondence. We also prove that a simple module over the above-mentioned incidence algebra is perfect if and only if its index is the longest element of a parabolic subgroup.
Comment: 26 pages; to appear in Combinatorial Theory