In this paper, we reprove a global converse theorem of Cogdell and Piatetski-Shapiro using purely global methods.

We give a finite presentation for the braid twist group of a decorated surface. If the decorated surface arises from a triangulated marked surface without punctures, we obtain a finite presentation for the spherical twist group of the associated 3-Calabi–Yau triangulated category. The motivation/application is that the result will be used to show that the (principal component of) space of stability conditions on the 3-Calabi–Yau category is simply connected in the sequel [King and Qiu, Invent. Math., to appear].

We study the fundamental groups of the exchange graphs for the bounded derived category D(Q) of a Dynkin quiver Q and the finite-dimensional derived category D(Gamma_N Q)of the Calabi–Yau-N Ginzburg algebra associated to Q. In the case of D(Q), we prove that its space of stability conditions (in the sense of Bridgeland) is simply connected. As an application, we show that the Donaldson–Thomas type invariant associated to Q can be calculated as a quantum dilogarithm function on its exchange graph. In the case of D(Gamma_N Q), we show that the faithfulness of the Seidel–Thomas braid group action (which is known for Q of type A or N=2) implies the simply connectedness of the space of stability conditions.

In this paper, we give geometric realizations of Lusztig's symmetries. We also give projective resolutions of a kind of standard modules. By using the geometric realizations and the projective resolutions, we obtain the categorification of the formulas of Lusztig's symmetries.

We prove the Mirković–Vilonen conjecture: the integral local intersection cohomology groups of spherical Schubert varieties on the affine Grassmannian have no$p$-torsion, as long as$p$is outside a certain small and explicitly given set of prime numbers. (Juteau has exhibited counterexamples when$p$is a bad prime.) The main idea is to convert this topological question into an algebraic question about perverse-coherent sheaves on the dual nilpotent cone using the Juteau–Mautner–Williamson theory of parity sheaves.