The aim is to give an introduction to the basic theory of affine Grassmannians and affine flag varieties. We put special emphasis on the utility of dynamic methods in sense of Drinfeld [D], and the utility of non-constant group schemes. We plan to adress the following aspects:
• Affine Grassmannians as moduli spaces of G-bundles, and as quotients of loop groups ;
• Cell decompositions of affine Grassmannians and affine flag varieties via dynamic methods: Iwahori, Cartan and Iwasawa decompositions ;
• Schubert varieties, Demazure resolutions, Convolution morphisms, Combinatorial structures ;
• Moduli spaces of G-bundles with level structure versus bundles under non-constant group schemes ;
• Beilinson-Drinfeld type deformations of affine Grassmannians ;
• Relation to the local geometry of moduli spaces of Drinfeld shtukas and Shimura varieties.[-]

Gushel-Mukai varieties are defined as the intersection of the Grassmannian Gr(2, 5) in its Plücker embedding, with a quadric and a linear space. They occur in dimension 6 (with a slighty modified construction), 5, 4, 3, 2 (where they are just K3 surfaces of degree 10), and 1 (where they are just genus 6 curves). Their theory parallels that of another important class of Fano varieties, cubic fourfolds, with many common features such as the presence of a canonically attached hyperkähler fourfold: the variety of lines for a cubic is replaced here with a double EPW sextic.
There is a big difference though: in dimension at least 3, GM varieties attached to a given EPW sextic form a family of positive dimension. However, we prove that the Hodge structure of any of these GM varieties can be reconstructed from that of the EPW sextic or of an associated surface of general type, depending on the parity of the dimension (for cubic fourfolds, the corresponding statement was proved in 1985 by Beauville and Donagi). This is joint work with Alexander Kuznetsov.[-]

I will give an introduction to the amplituhedron, a geometric object generalizing the positive Grassmannian, which was introduced by Arkani-Hamed and Trnka in the context of scattering amplitudes in N=4 super Yang Mills theory. I will focus in particular on its connections to cluster algebras, including the cluster adjacency conjecture. (Based on joint works with multiple coauthors, especially Evan-Zohar, Lakrec, Parisi, Sherman-Bennett, and Tessler.)[-]

The loop Grassmannians of reductive groups will be reconsidered as a construction in the setting of “local spaces” over a curve. The notion of a local space is a version of the fundamental structure of a factorization space introduced and developed by Beilinson and Drinfeld. The weakening of the requirements formalizes some well-known examples of “almost factorization spaces.” The change of emphases leads to new constructions. The main example will be generalizations of loop Grassmannians corresponding to quadratic forms Q on based lattices. The quadratic form corresponding to the loop Grassmannian of a simply connected group G is the basic level of G.[-]

We present a new approach to affine Deligne Lusztig varieties which allows us to study the so called "non-basic" case in a type free manner. The central idea is to translate the question of non-emptiness and the computation of the dimensions of these varieties into geometric questions in the Bruhat-Tits building. All boils down to understand existence of certain positively folded galleries in affine Coxeter complexes. To do so, we explicitly construct such galleries and use, among other techniques, the root operators introduced by Gaussent and Littelmann to manipulate them.[-]

In the 80's Beauville generalized several foundational results of Nikulin on automorphism groups of K3 surfaces to hyperkähler manifolds. Since then the study of automorphism groups of hyperkähler manifolds and in particular of hyperkähler fourfolds got very much attention. I will present some classification results for automorphisms on hyperkähler fourfolds that are deformation equivalent to the Hilbert scheme of two points on a K3 surface and describe some explicit examples. I will give particular attention to double EPW sextics, that admit in a natural way a non-symplectic involution. Time permitting I will show how the rich geometry of double EPW sextics has an important connection to a classical question of U. Morin (1930).[-]

In the 80's Beauville generalized several foundational results of Nikulin on automorphism groups of K3 surfaces to hyperkähler manifolds. Since then the study of automorphism groups of hyperkähler manifolds and in particular of hyperkähler fourfolds got very much attention. I will present some classification results for automorphisms on hyperkähler fourfolds that are deformation equivalent to the Hilbert scheme of two points on a K3 surface and describe some explicit examples. I will give particular attention to double EPW sextics, that admit in a natural way a non-symplectic involution. Time permitting I will show how the rich geometry of double EPW sextics has an important connection to a classical question of U. Morin (1930).[-]

In the 80's Beauville generalized several foundational results of Nikulin on automorphism groups of K3 surfaces to hyperkähler manifolds. Since then the study of automorphism groups of hyperkähler manifolds and in particular of hyperkähler fourfolds got very much attention. I will present some classification results for automorphisms on hyperkähler fourfolds that are deformation equivalent to the Hilbert scheme of two points on a K3 surface and describe some explicit examples. I will give particular attention to double EPW sextics, that admit in a natural way a non-symplectic involution. Time permitting I will show how the rich geometry of double EPW sextics has an important connection to a classical question of U. Morin (1930).[-]

I will present a joint work with Sara Angela Filippini, Laurent Manivel and Fabio Tanturri (arXiv: 1704.01436). We introduce a new class of varieties, called orbital degeneracy loci. The idea is to use any orbit closure in a representation of an algebraic group to generalise the classical construction of degeneracy loci of morphisms between vector bundles, and of zero loci as well. After giving the definition of an orbital degeneracy locus, I will explain how to control the canonical bundle of these varieties: under some Gorenstein condition on the orbit closure, it is possible to construct examples of varieties with trivial canonical bundle or of Fano type. Finally, if time will permit, I will give some explicit examples of such degeneracy loci, which allow to construct many Calabi-Yau varieties of dimension three and four, and some new Fano fourfolds.[-]

The geometric Satake equivalence identifies the Satake category of a reductive group $G$ – that is, the category of equivariant perverse sheaves on the affine Grassmannian $G_{rG}$ – with the representation category of its Langlands dual group $G^∨$. While the Satake category is topological in nature, it has a poorly understood algebro-geometric cousin: the category of perverse coherent sheaves on $G_{rG}$. This category is not semi-simple and its monoidal product is not symmetric. We show however that it is rigid and admits renormalized r-matrices similar to those appearing in the theory of quantum loop or KLR algebras. Applying the framework developed by Kang-Kashiwara-Kim-Oh in their proof of the dual canonical basis conjecture, we use these results to show that the coherent Satake category of $GL_n$ is a monoidal cluster categorification in the sense of Hernandez-Leclerc. This clarifies the physical meaning of the coherent Satake category: simple perverse coherent sheaves correspond to Wilson-'t Hooft operators in $\mathcal{N} = 2$ gauge theory, just as simple perverse sheaves correspond to 't Hooft operators in $\mathcal{N} = 4$ gauge theory following the work of Kapustin-Witten. Our results also explain the appearance of identical quivers in the work of Kedem-Di Francesco on $Q$-systems and in the context of BPS quivers. More generally, our construction of renormalized r-matrices works in any chiral $E_1$-category, providing a new way of understanding the ubiquity of cluster algebras in $\mathcal{N} = 2$ field theory: the existence of renormalized r-matrices, hence of iterated cluster mutation, is a formal feature of such theories after passing to their holomorphic-topological twists. This is joint work with Sabin Cautis (arXiv:1801.08111).[-]