A vanishing theorem for group compactifications (Q1077485)

Let G be a semisimple adjoint group over the field of complex numbers. Consider G as a \(G\times G\) homogeneous space under left and right translation. De Concini and Procesi have constructed a nice equivariant compactification X of G and have studied the cohomology of line bundles over X. The author gives a construction of X over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic, and extends the results on the cohomology of line bundles over X to this more general case. As for the construction of X, it is shown that it relies on a well known result of Iwahori and Matsumoto on the decomposition of the group of rational points of G over the field of formal Laurent series and on the theory of toric varieties. As for the result on line bundles, it comes out as an application of ideas due to Mehta and Ramanathan, which use the notion of Frobenius split varieties to prove similar results in the case of flag and Schubert varieties.