Geometry of horospherical varieties of Picard rank one

We study the geometry of smooth non-homogeneous horospherical varieties of Picard rank one. These have been classified by Pasquier and include the well-known odd symplectic Grassmannians. We focus our study on quantum cohomology, with a view towards Dubrovin’s conjecture. In particular, we describe the cohomology groups of these varieties as well as a Chevalley formula, and prove that many Gromov-Witten invariants are enumerative. This enables us to prove that in many cases the quantum cohomology is semisimple. We give a presentation of the quantum cohomology ring for odd symplectic Grassmannians. The final two sections are devoted to the derived categories of coherent sheaves on horospherical varieties. We first discuss a general construction of exceptional bundles on these varieties. We then study in detail the case of the horospherical variety associated to the exceptional group G2, and construct a full rectangular Lefschetz exceptional collection in the derived category.