In this article we propose a geometric description of Arthur packets for p-adic groups using vanishing cycles of perverse sheaves. Our approach is inspired by the 1992 book by Adams, Barbasch and Vogan on the Langlands classification of admissible representations of real groups and follows the direction indicated by Vogan in his 1993 paper on the Langlands correspondence. Using vanishing cycles, we introduce and study a functor from the category of equivariant perverse sheaves on the moduli space of certain Langlands parameters to local systems on the regular part of the conormal bundle for this variety. In this article we establish the main properties of this functor and show that it plays the role of microlocalization in the work of Adams, Barbasch and Vogan. We use this to define ABV-packets for pure rational forms of p-adic groups and propose a geometric description of the transfer coefficients that appear in Arthur's main local result in the endoscopic classification of representations. This article includes conjectures modelled on Vogan's work, especially the prediction that Arthur packets are ABV-packets for p-adic groups. We gather evidence for these conjectures by verifying them in numerous examples.

We introduce and study mutation of torsion pairs, as a generalization of mutation of cluster tilting objects, rigid objects and maximal rigid objects. It is proved that any mutation of a torsion pair is again a torsion pair. A geometric realization of mutation of torsion pairs in the cluster category of type A_n or A_\infty is given via rotation of Ptolemy diagrams.

Inspired by the quantum McKay correspondence, we consider the classical ADE Lie theory as a quantum theory over sl2. We introduce anti-symmetric characters for representations of quantum groups and investigate the Fourier duality to study the spectral theory. In the ADE Lie theory, there is a correspondence between the eigenvalues of the Coxeter element and the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix. We formalize related notions and prove such a correspondence for representations of Verlinde algebras of quantum groups: this includes generalized Dynkin diagrams over any simple Lie algebra g at any level k. This answers a recent comment of Terry Gannon on an old question posed by Victor Kac in 1994.

We prove the local hard Lefschetz theorem and local Hodge–Riemann bilinear relations for Soergel bimodules. Using results of Soergel and Kübel, one may deduce an algebraic proof of the Jantzen conjectures. We observe that the Jantzen filtration may depend on the choice of non-dominant regular deformation direction.

A finite EI category is a small category with finitely many morphisms such that every endomorphism is an isomorphism. They include finite groups, finite posets and free categories of finite quivers as special cases. In this paper we consider the representation types of finite EI categories, describe some criteria for finite representation type, and use them to classify the representation types of several classes of finite EI categories with extra properties.