For non-singular intersections of pairs of quadrics in 11 or more variables, we prove an asymptotic for the number of rational points in an expanding box.

Let $K$ be a number field. For any system of semisimple mod $\ell$ Galois representations $\{{\it\phi}_{\ell }:\text{Gal}(\bar{\mathbb{Q}}/K)\rightarrow \text{GL}_{N}(\mathbb{F}_{\ell })\}_{\ell }$ arising from étale cohomology (Definition 1), there exists a finite normal extension $L$ of $K$ such that if we denote ${\it\phi}_{\ell }(\text{Gal}(\bar{\mathbb{Q}}/K))$ and ${\it\phi}_{\ell }(\text{Gal}(\bar{\mathbb{Q}}/L))$ by $\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$ and $\bar{{\it\gamma}}_{\ell }$, respectively, for all $\ell$ and let $\bar{\mathbf{S}}_{\ell }$ be the $\mathbb{F}_{\ell }$-semisimple subgroup of $\text{GL}_{N,\mathbb{F}_{\ell }}$ associated to $\bar{{\it\gamma}}_{\ell }$ (or $\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$) by Nori’s theory [On subgroups of$\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{p})$, Invent. Math. 88 (1987), 257–275] for sufficiently large $\ell$, then the following statements hold for all sufficiently large $\ell$.

A(i) The formal character of $\bar{\mathbf{S}}_{\ell }{\hookrightarrow}\text{GL}_{N,\mathbb{F}_{\ell }}$ (Definition 1) is independent of $\ell$ and equal to the formal character of $(\mathbf{G}_{\ell }^{\circ })^{\text{der}}{\hookrightarrow}\text{GL}_{N,\mathbb{Q}_{\ell }}$, where $(\mathbf{G}_{\ell }^{\circ })^{\text{der}}$ is the derived group of the identity component of $\mathbf{G}_{\ell }$, the monodromy group of the corresponding semi-simplified $\ell$-adic Galois representation ${\rm\Phi}_{\ell }^{\text{ss}}$.

A(ii) The non-cyclic composition factors of $\bar{{\it\gamma}}_{\ell }$ and $\bar{\mathbf{S}}_{\ell }(\mathbb{F}_{\ell })$ are identical. Therefore, the composition factors of $\bar{{\it\gamma}}_{\ell }$ are finite simple groups of Lie type of characteristic $\ell$ and are cyclic groups.

B(i) The total $\ell$-rank $\text{rk}_{\ell }\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$ of $\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$ (Definition 14) is equal to the rank of $\bar{\mathbf{S}}_{\ell }$ and is therefore independent of $\ell$.

B(ii) The $A_{n}$-type $\ell$-rank $\text{rk}_{\ell }^{A_{n}}\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$ of $\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell }$ (Definition 14) for $n\in \mathbb{N}\setminus \{1,2,3,4,5,7,8\}$ and the parity of $(\text{rk}_{\ell }^{A_{4}}\bar{{\rm\Gamma}}_{\ell })/4$ are independent of $\ell$.

In this paper we consider Grassmannians in arbitrary characteristic. Generalizing Kapranov’s well-known characteristic-zero results, we construct dual exceptional collections on them (which are, however, not strong) as well as a tilting bundle. We show that this tilting bundle has a quasi-hereditary endomorphism ring and we identify the standard, costandard, projective and simple modules of the latter.

In Bennett et al. [BGG reciprocity for current algebras, Adv. Math. 231 (2012), 276–305] it was conjectured that a BGG-type reciprocity holds for the category of graded representations with finite-dimensional graded components for the current algebra associated to a simple Lie algebra. We associate a current algebra to any indecomposable affine Lie algebra and show that, in this generality, the BGG reciprocity is true for the corresponding category of representations.

Let $G$ be a simple algebraic group. A closed subgroup $H$ of $G$ is said to be spherical if it has a dense orbit on the flag variety $G/B$ of $G$. Reductive spherical subgroups of simple Lie groups were classified by Krämer in 1979. In 1997, Brundan showed that each example from Krämer’s list also gives rise to a spherical subgroup in the corresponding simple algebraic group in any positive characteristic. Nevertheless, up to now there has been no classification of all such instances in positive characteristic. The goal of this paper is to complete this classification. It turns out that there is only one additional instance (up to isogeny) in characteristic 2 which has no counterpart in Krämer’s classification. As one of our key tools, we prove a general deformation result for subgroup schemes that allows us to deduce the sphericality of subgroups in positive characteristic from the same property for subgroups in characteristic zero.

Under endoscopic assumptions about $L$-packets of unitary groups, we prove the local Gan–Gross–Prasad conjecture for tempered representations of unitary groups over $p$-adic fields. Roughly, this conjecture says that branching laws for $U(n-1)\subset U(n)$ can be computed using epsilon factors.

We find a non-displaceable Lagrangian torus fiber in a semi-toric system which is superheavy with respect to a certain symplectic quasi-state. The proof employs both 4-dimensional techniques and those from symplectic field theory. In particular, our result implies Lagrangian $\mathbb{R}P^{2}$ is not a stem in $\mathbb{C}P^{2}$, answering a question of Entov and Polterovich.