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).

In this paper, we discuss some partitions of affine flag varieties. These partitions include as special cases the partition of affine flag variety into affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties and the affine analogue of the partition of flag varieties into $\cb_w (b) $ introduced by Lusztig in\cite {L1} as part of the definition of character sheaves.