Construction of central elements in the affine Hecke algebra via nearby cycles

Abstract

Let $G$ be a reductive group, let $Gr=G((t))/G[[t]]$ be the corresponding affine Grassmannian and let $Fl=G((t))/I$ be the affine flag variety. We construct, following an idea of Belinson, a 1-parametric deformation of the product $Gr\times G/B$ to $Fl$. We use this construction to produce perverse sheaves on $Fl$ which are central with respect to the convolution product from spherical perverse sheaves on $Gr$.

Revised version