Abstract. For every fake projective plane X with automorphism group of order 21, we prove that H i (X, 2L) = 0 for all i and for every ample line bundle L with L 2 = 1. For every fake projective plane with automorphism group of order 9, we prove the same vanishing for every cubic root (and its twist by a 2-torsion) of the canonical bundle K. As an immediate consequence, there are exceptional sequences of length 3 on such fake projective planes.A compact complex surface with the same Betti numbers as the complex projective plane P 2 C is called a fake projective plane if it is not isomorphic to P 2 C . The canonical bundle of a fake projective plane is ample. So a fake projective plane is nothing but a surface of general type with p g = 0 and c 2 1 = 3c 2 = 9. Furthermore, its universal cover is the unit 2-ball in C 2 by [Au] and [Y] and its fundamental group is a co-compact arithmetic subgroup of PU(2, 1) by [Kl].Recently, Prasad and Yeung [PY] classified all possible fundamental groups of fake projective planes. Their proof also shows that the automorphism group of a fake projective plane has order 1, 3, 9, 7, or 21. Then Cartwright and Steger ([CS], [CS2]) have carried out group theoretic enumeration based on computer to obtain more precise result: there are exactly 50 distinct fundamental groups, each corresponding to a pair of fake projective planes, complex conjugate to each other. They also have computed the automorphism groups of all fake projective planes X. In particular Aut(X) ∼ = {1}, C 3 , C 2 3 or 7 : 3, where C n is the cyclic group of order n and 7 : 3 is the unique non-abelian group of order 21. Among the 50 pairs 34 admit a non-trivial group of automorphisms: 3 pairs have Aut ∼ = 7 : 3, 3 pairs have Aut ∼ = C 2 3 and 28 pairs have Aut ∼ = C 3 . For each pair of fake projective planes Cartwright and Steger [CS2] have also computed the torsion group H 1 (X, Z) =Tor(H 2 (X, Z)) =Tor(Pic(X)), which is the abelianization of the fundamental group. According to their computation a fake projective plane with more than 3 automorphisms has no 3-torsion.It can be shown (Lemma 1.5) that if a fake projective plane X has no 3-torsion in H 1 (X, Z), then the canonical class K X is divisible by 3 and has a unique cubic root, i.e., a unique line bundle L 0 , up to isomorphism, such that 3L 0 ∼ = K X . Its isomorphism class [L 0 ] is fixed by Aut(X), since Aut(X) fixes the canonical class.For a fake projective plane X an ample line bundle L is called an ample generator if its isomorphism class [L] generates Pic(X) modulo torsion, or equivalently if the self-intersection number L 2 = 1. Any two ample generators differ by a torsion. We