We construct a Kruskal-Szekeres-type analytic extension of the Emparan-Reall black ring, and investigate its geometry. We prove that the extension is maximal, globally hyperbolic, and unique within a natural class of extensions. The key to those results is the proof that causal geodesics are either complete, or approach a singular boundary in finite affine time. Alternative maximal analytic extensions are also constructed.

We show that it is possible to perturb arbitrary vacuum asymptotically flat spacetimes to new ones having exactly the same energy and linear momentum, but with center of mass and angular momentum equal to any preassigned values measured with respect to a fixed affine frame at infinity. This is in contrast to the axisymmetric situation where a bound on the angular momentum by the mass has been shown to hold for black hole solutions. Our construction involves changing the solution at the linear level in a shell near infinity, and perturbing to impose the vacuum constraint equations. The procedure involves the perturbation correction of an approximate solution which is given explicitly.

We consider an embedded convex compact ancient solution t to the curve shortening flow in R2. We prove that t is either a family of contracting circles, which is a type I ancient solution, or a family of evolving Angenent ovals, which is of type II.

We construct a new equivariant cohomology theory for a certain class of differential vertex algebras, which we call the chiral equivariant cohomology. A principal example of a differential vertex algebra in this class is the chiral de Rham complex of Malikov-Schechtman-Vaintrob of a manifold with a group action. The main idea in this paper is to synthesize the algebraic approach to classical equivariant cohomology due to H. Cartan, with the theory of differential vertex algebras, by using an appropriate notion of invariant theory. We also construct the vertex algebra analogues of the Mathai-Quillen isomorphism, the Weil and the Cartan models for equivariant cohomology, and the Chern-Weil map. We give interesting cohomology classes in the new theory that have no classical analogues.

Making use of the extended flux homomorphism defined in [13] on the group Symp§g of symplectomorphisms of a closed ori- ented surface §g of genus g ≥ 2, we introduce new characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with symplectic, equivalently area-preserving, total holonomy. These characteristic classes are stable with respect to g and we show that they are highly non- trivial. We also prove that the second homology of the group Ham§g of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of §g, equipped with the discrete topology, is very large for all g ≥ 2.