Frobenius splitting and hyperplane sections of flag manifolds (Q678257)

Let \(G\) be a semisimple simply connected algebraic group over an algebraically closed field \(k\) of characteristic \(p>0\) and let \(B\) be a Borel subgroup of \(G\) containing the maximal torus \(T\). We let the positive roots be the roots of the opposite Borel subgroup. Let \(\rho\) be half the sum of the positive roots. Our main result says that a tensor \(a\otimes b\in\text{St}\otimes\text{St}\) maps to a Frobenius splitting for the flag manifold \(G/B\) if and only if \(\chi(a\otimes b)\neq 0\), where \(\chi\) denotes the \(G\)-invariant form on the Steinberg module \(\text{St}=H^0(G/B,{\mathcal L}((p-1)\rho))\). Also if \(a\) and \(b\) happen to be \((p-1)\)-st powers \(a=s^{p-1}\), \(b=t^{p-1}\), where \(s,t\) are sections of \({\mathcal L}(\rho)\) then the zero schemes \(Z(s)\) and \(Z(t)\) are compatibly Frobenius split. This simple result allows us to recover the main results of Frobenius splitting of \(G/B\), \(G/B\times G/B\) and \(G/B\times\dots\times G/B\) along with the fact that the zero scheme of any non-zero section of the ample generator \({\mathcal L}\) for \(\text{Pic}(G/P)\), where \(P\) is a parabolic subgroup, is compatibly Frobenius split.