Abstract
We exhibit basic algebro-geometric results on the formal model of semi-infinite flag varieties and its Schubert varieties over an algebraically closed field
${\mathbb K}$
of characteristic
$\neq 2$
from scratch. We show that the formal model of a semi-infinite flag variety admits a unique nice (ind-)scheme structure, its projective coordinate ring has a
$\mathbb {Z}$
-model and it admits a Frobenius splitting compatible with the boundaries and opposite cells in positive characteristic. This establishes the normality of the Schubert varieties of the quasi-map space with a fixed degree (instead of their limits proved in [K, Math. Ann. 371 no.2 (2018)]) when
$\mathsf {char}\, {\mathbb K} =0$
or
$\gg 0$
, and the higher-cohomology vanishing of their nef line bundles in arbitrary characteristic
$\neq 2$
. Some particular cases of these results play crucial roles in our proof [47] of a conjecture by Lam, Li, Mihalcea and Shimozono [60] that describes an isomorphism between affine and quantum K-groups of a flag manifold.
On a conjecture of Pappas and Rapoport about the standard local model for GL_d