Let <i>H</i> denote a spherical subgroup within a semisimple algebraic group <i>G</i>. In this paper we study the closures of the finitely many <i>H</i>-orbits in the flag variety of <i>G</i>. Using the language of Frobenius splitting we provide a criterion for these closures to have nice geometric and cohomological properties. We then show how the criterion applies to the spherical subgroups of minimal rank studied by N. Ressayre. Finally, we also provide applications of the criterion to orbit closures which are not multiplicity-free in the sense defined by M. Brion.

We give a geometric realization, the tagged rotation, of the AR-translation on the generalized cluster category associated to a surface S with marked points and non-empty boundary, which generalizes Brüstle–Zhang’s result for the puncture free case. As an application, we show that the intersection of the shifts in the 3-Calabi–Yau derived category D(Γ_S) associated to the surface and the corresponding Seidel–Thomas braid group of D(Γ_S) is empty, unless S is a polygon with at most one puncture (i.e. of type A or D).

We study extension spaces, cotorsion pairs and their mutations in the cluster category of a marked surface without punctures. Under the one-to-one correspondence between the curves, valued closed curves in the marked surface and the indecomposable objects in the associated cluster category, we prove that the dimension of extension space of two indecomposable objects in the cluster categories equals to the intersection number of the corresponding curves. By using this result, we prove that there are no non-trivial t-structures in the cluster categories when the surface is connected. Based on this result, we give a classification of cotorsion pairs in these categories. Moreover we define the notion of paintings of a marked surface without punctures and their rotations. They are a geometric model of cotorsion pairs and of their mutations respectively.