On the derived category of the Cayley plane (Q555558)

Since the seminal work of \textit{A. A. Beilinson} [Funct. Anal. Appl. 12, 214--216 (1979; Zbl 0424.14003)] and \textit{M. M. Kapranov} [Invent. Math. 92, No.3, 479--508 (1988; Zbl 0651.18008)], bounded derived categories of coherent sheaves on rational homogeneous spaces have drawn a lot of attention and in several known cases (for example, quadrics and Grassmannians) the category in question is generated by an exceptional collection of homogeneous vector bundles. Recall that an object \(E\) in a \(k\)-linear triangulated category \(\mathcal{T}\) is exceptional if \(\text{Hom}(E,E)=k\) and \(\Hom(E,E[p])=0\) for \(p\neq 0\). An exceptional collection is an ordered collection of exceptional objects \((E_1,\ldots,E_n)\) such that \(\Hom(E_i,E_j[p])=0\) for \(i>j\) and all \(p\in \mathbb{Z}\) and such a collection is strongly exceptional if in addition \(\Hom(E_i,E_j[p])=0\) for \(p>0\) and \(i\leq j\). An exceptional collection is full if any full triangulated subcategory containing the collection is equivalent to \(\mathcal{T}\). In the case of a rational homogeneous space it is known that the length of an exceptional collection is bounded by the topological Euler characteristic of the space. In the paper under review the author describes a maximal strongly exceptional collection consisting of 27 irreducible homogeneous bundles in the derived category of the Cayley plane, the minimal homogeneous projective variety of \(E_6\). Apart from line bundes, the bundles in the collection are constructed from the minimal homogeneous bundle on the Cayley plane and its symmetric powers of degree two and three. It remains a conjecture whether the constructed collection is in fact full.