Exotic t-structures and actions of quantum affine algebras

Abstract

We explain how quantum affine algebra actions can be used to systematically construct t-structures. The main idea, roughly speaking, is to take advantage of the two different descriptions of quantum affine algebras, the Drinfeld--Jimbo and the Kac--Moody realizations. Our main application is to obtain exotic t-structures on certain convolution varieties defined using the Beilinson--Drinfeld and affine Grassmannians. These varieties play an important role in the geometric Langlands program, knot homology constructions, K-theoretic geometric Satake and the coherent Satake category. As a special case we also recover the exotic t-structures of Bezrukavnikov--Mirkovic on the (Grothendieck--)Springer resolution in type A.