The paper begins by overviewing the basic facts on geometric exceptional
collections. Then, we derive, for any coherent sheaf \cF on a smooth
projective variety with a geometric collection, two spectral sequences: the
first one abuts to \cF and the second one to its cohomology. The main goal of
the paper is to generalize Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity for coherent sheaves
on projective spaces to coherent sheaves on smooth projective varieties X
with a geometric collection σ. We define the notion of regularity of a
coherent sheaf \cF on X with respect to σ. We show that the basic
formal properties of the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of coherent sheaves
over projective spaces continue to hold in this new setting and we show that in
case of coherent sheaves on \PP^n and for a suitable geometric collection of
coherent sheaves on \PP^n both notions of regularity coincide. Finally, we
carefully study the regularity of coherent sheaves on a smooth quadric
hypersurface Q_n \subset \PP^{n+1} (n odd) with respect to a suitable
geometric collection and we compare it with the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity
of their extension by zero in \PP^{n+1}.Comment: To appear in Math. Proc. Cambridg