Grassmannian twists on the derived category via spherical functors

Abstract

We construct new examples of derived autoequivalences for a family of higher-dimensional Calabi-Yau varieties. Specifically, we take the total spaces of certain natural vector bundles over Grassmannians G(r,d) of r-planes in a d-dimensional vector space, and define endofunctors of the bounded derived categories of coherent sheaves associated to these varieties. In the case r=2 we show that these are autoequivalences using the theory of spherical functors. Our autoequivalences naturally generalize the Seidel-Thomas spherical twist for analogous bundles over projective spaces.