Regularity on abelian varieties III: relationship with Generic Vanishing and applications

We describe the relationship between the notions of $M$-regular sheaf and $GV$-sheaf in the case of abelian varieties. The former is a natural strengthening of the latter, and we provide an algebraic criterion characterizing it among the larger class. Based on this we deduce new basic properties of both $M$-regular and $GV$-sheaves. In the second part we give a number of applications of generation criteria for $M$-regular sheaves to the study of Seshadri constants, Picard bundles, pluricanonical maps on irregular varieties, and semihomogeneous vector bundles. This second part of the paper is based on our earlier preprint math.AG/0306103, with some improved statements and shortened arguments.