The unipotent variety of a reductive algebraic group G plays an important role in the representation theory. In this paper, we will consider the closure U of the unipotent variety in the De ConciniProcesi compactification G of a connected simple algebraic group G. We will prove that U-U is a union of some G-stable pieces introduced by Lusztig in [Moscow Math. J 4 (2004) 869896]. This was first conjectured by Lusztig. We will also give an explicit description of U. It turns out that similar results hold for the closure of any Steinberg fiber in G.

Let W a be an affine Weyl group and : W a W 0 be the natural projection to the corresponding finite Weyl group. We say that w W a has finite Coxeter part if (w) is conjugate to a Coxeter element of W 0. The elements with finite Coxeter part are a union of conjugacy classes of W a. We show that for each conjugacy class O of W a with finite Coxeter part there exists a unique maximal proper parabolic subgroup W J of W a, such that the set of minimal length elements in O is exactly the set of Coxeter elements in W J. Similar results hold for twisted conjugacy classes.

Let G be a connected semi-simple algebraic group of adjoint type over an algebraically closed field and let ar G be the wonderful compactification of G. For a fixed pair (B,B  ) of opposite Borel subgroups of G, we look at intersections of Lusztigs G-stable pieces and the B  B-orbits in ar G , as well as intersections of BB-orbits and B  B  -orbits in ar G . We give explicit conditions for such intersections to be nonempty, and in each case, we show that every nonempty intersection is smooth and irreducible, that the closure of the intersection is equal to the intersection of the closures, and that the nonempty intersections form a strongly admissible partition of .

We prove that the DeligneLusztig variety associated to minimal length elements in any <i></i>-conjugacy class of the Weyl group is affine, which was conjectured by Orlik and Rapoport in [S. Orlik, M. Rapoport, DeligneLusztig varieties and period domains over finite fields, arXiv: 0705.1646].

We classify the Ext-quivers of hearts in the bounded derived category D(A_n) and the finite-dimensional derived category D(\Gamma_N A_n) of the Calabi-Yau-N Ginzburg algebra D(\Gamma_N A_n). This provides the classification for Buan-Thomas' colored quiver for higher clusters of A-type. We also give explicit combinatorial constructions from a binary tree with n+2 leaves to a torsion pair in mod k\overrightarrow{A_n} and a cluster tilting set in the corresponding cluster category, for the straight oriented A-type quiver \overrightarrow{A_n}. As an application, we show that the orientation of the n-dimensional ssociahedron induced by poset structure of binary trees coincides with the orientation induced by poset structure of torsion pairs in mod k\overrightarrow{A_n} (under the correspondence above).