Local rigidity of quasi-regular varieties

For a G-variety X with an open orbit, we define its boundary ∂ X as the complement of the open orbit. The action sheaf S _X is the subsheaf of the tangent sheaf made of vector fields tangent to ∂ X. We prove, for a large family of smooth spherical varieties, the vanishing of the cohomology groups H ⁱ (X, S _X ) for i > 0, extending results of Bien and Brion (Compos. Math. 104:1–26, 1996). We apply these results to study the local rigidity of the smooth projective varieties with Picard number one classified in Pasquier (Math. Ann., in press).