Canonical bases of quantum Schubert cells and their symmetries

The goal of this work is to provide an elementary construction of the canonical basis $\mathbf B(w)$ in each quantum Schubert cell~$U_q(w)$ and to establish its invariance under modified Lusztig's symmetries. To that effect, we obtain a direct characterization of the upper global basis $\mathbf B^{up}$ in terms of a suitable bilinear form and show that $\mathbf B(w)$ is contained in $\mathbf B^{up}$ and its large part is preserved by modified Lusztig's symmetries.