In this note we show that one open 4-dimensional ellipsoid embeds symplectically into another if and only if the ECH capacities of the first are no larger than those of the second. This proves a conjecture due to Hofer. The argument uses the equivalence of the ellipsoidal embedding problem with a ball embedding problem that was recently established by McDuff. Its method is inspired by Hutchings’ recent results on embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities but does not use them.

We introduce a technique based on Gaussian maps to study whether a surface can lie on a threefold as a very ample divisor with given normal bundle. We give applications, among which one to surfaces of general type and another to Enriques surfaces. In particular, we prove the genus bound g  17 for Enriques Fano threefolds. Moreover we find a new Enriques-Fano threefold of genus 9 whose normalization has canonical but not terminal singularities and does not admit Q-smoothings.

In this paper we study the Dirichlet problem for fully nonlinear second-order equations on a riemannian manifold. As in our previous paper [HL4], we define equations via closed subsets of the 2-jet bundle where each equation has a natural dual equation. Basic existence and uniqueness theorems are established in a wide variety of settings. However, the emphasis is on starting with a constant coefficient equation as a model, which then universally determines an equation on every riemannian manifold which is equipped with a topological reduction of the structure group to the invariance group of the model. For example, this covers all branches of the homogeneous complex Monge-Amp`ere equation on an almost complex hermitian manifold X. In general, for an equation F on a manifold X and a smooth domain  X, we give geometric conditions which imply that the Dirichlet problem on is uniquely solvable for all continuous boundary functions. We begin by introducing a weakened form of comparison which has the advantage that local implies global. We then introduce two fundamental concepts. The first is the notion of a monotonicity cone M for F. If X carries a global Msubharmonic function, then weak comparison implies full comparison. The second notion is that of boundary F-convexity, which is defined in terms of the asymptotics of F and is used to define barriers. In combining these notions the Dirichlet problem becomes uniquely solvable as claimed. This article also introduces the notion of local affine jet-equivalence for subequations. It is used in treating the cases above, but gives results for a much broader spectrum of equations on manifolds, including inhomogeneous equations and the Calabi-Yau equation on almost complex hermitian manifolds. A considerable portion of the paper is concerned with specific examples. They include a wide variety of equations which make sense on any riemannian manifold, and many which hold universally on almost complex or quaternionic hermitian manifolds, or topologically calibrated manifolds.

In this paper, we prove a scalar curvature rigidity result for geodesic balls in Sn. This result contrasts sharply with the counterexamples to Min-Oo’s conjecture constructed in [7].

We introduce a gauge-theoretic integer valued lift of the Rohlin invariant of a smooth 4-manifold X with the homology of S1×S3. The invariant has two terms: one is a count of solutions to the Seiberg–Witten equations on X, and the other is essentially the index of the Dirac operator on a non-compact manifold with end modeled on the infinite cyclic cover of X. Each term is metric (and perturbation) dependent, and we show that these dependencies cancel as the metric and perturbation vary in a generic 1-parameter family.

We define analytic torsion (X, E,H) 2 detH•(X, E,H) for the twisted de Rham complex, consisting of the spaces of differential forms on a compact oriented Riemannian manifold X valued in a flat vector bundle E, with a differential given by rE + H ^ · , where rE is a flat connection on E, H is an odd-degree closed differential form on X, and H•(X, E,H) denotes the cohomology of this Z2-graded complex. The definition uses pseudodifferential operators and residue traces. We show that when dimX is odd, (X, E,H) is independent of the choice of metrics on X and E and of the representative H in the cohomology class [H]. We define twisted analytic torsion in the context of generalized geometry and show that when H is a 3-form, the deformation H 7! H−dB, where B is a 2-form on X, is equivalent to deforming a usual metric g to a generalized metric (g,B). We demonstrate some basic functorial properties. When H is a top-degree form, we compute the torsion, define its simplicial counterpart, and prove an analogue of the Cheeger-M¨uller Theorem. We also study the twisted analytic torsion for T -dual circle bundles with integral 3- form fluxes.

We show that for every simple closed curve , the extremal length and the hyperbolic length of  are quasi-convex functions along any Teichm¨uller geodesic. As a corollary, we conclude that, in Teichm¨uller space equipped with the Teichm¨uller metric, balls are quasi-convex.

Define a “Liouville domain” to be a compact exact symplectic manifold with contact-type boundary. We use embedded contact homology to assign to each four-dimensional Liouville domain (or subset thereof) a sequence of real numbers, which we call “ECH capacities”. The ECH capacities of a Liouville domain are defined in terms of the “ECH spectrum” of its boundary, which measures the amount of symplectic action needed to represent certain classes in embedded contact homology. Using cobordism maps on embedded contact homology (defined in joint work with Taubes), we show that the ECH capacities are monotone with respect to symplectic embeddings. We compute the ECH capacities of ellipsoids, polydisks, certain subsets of the cotangent bundle of T 2, and disjoint unions of examples for which the ECH capacities are known. The resulting symplectic embedding obstructions are sharp in some interesting cases, for example for the problem of embedding an ellipsoid into a ball (as shown by McDuff-Schlenk) or embedding a disjoint union of balls into a ball. We also state and present evidence for a conjecture under which the asymptotics of the ECH capacities of a Liouville domain recover its symplectic volume.

We study the action of the group of contact diffeomorphisms on CR deformations of compact three dimensional CR manifolds. Using anisotropic function spaces and an anisotropic structure on the space of contact diffeomorphisms, we establish the existence of local transverse slices to the action of the contact diffeomorphism group in the neighborhood of a fixed embeddable strongly pseudoconvex CR structure.

We show that the attenuated geodesic ray transform on two dimensional simple surfaces is injective. Moreover, we give a stability estimate and develop a reconstruction procedure.

We embed polarised orbifolds with cyclic stabiliser groups into weighted projective space via a weighted form of Kodaira embedding. Dividing by the (non-reductive) automorphisms of weighted projective space then formally gives a moduli space of orbifolds. We show how to express this as a reductive quotient and so a GIT problem, thus defining a notion of stability for orbifolds. We then prove an orbifold version of Donaldson’s theorem: the existence of an orbifold K¨ahler metric of constant scalar curvature implies K-semistability. By extending the notion of slope stability to orbifolds, we therefore get an explicit obstruction to the existence of constant scalar curvature orbifold K¨ahler metrics. We describe the manifold applications of this orbifold result, and show how many previously known results (Troyanov, Ghigi-Koll´ar, Rollin-Singer, the AdSCFT Sasaki-Einstein obstructions of Gauntlett-Martelli-Sparks-Yau) fit into this framework.

We describe a notion of ampleness for line bundles on orbifolds with cyclic quotient singularities that is related to embeddings in weighted projective space, and prove a global asymptotic expansion for a weighted Bergman kernel associated to such a line bundle.

We study moduli spaces of O’Grady’s ten-dimensional irreducible symplectic manifolds. These moduli spaces are covers of modular varieties of dimension 21, namely quotients of hermitian symmetric domains by a suitable arithmetic group. The interesting and new aspect of this case is that the group in question is strictly bigger than the stable orthogonal group. This makes it different from both the K3 and the K3[n] case, which are of dimension 19 and 20 respectively.

We prove some half-space theorems for minimal surfaces in the Heisenberg group Nil3 and the Lie group Sol3 endowed with their standard left-invariant Riemannian metrics. If S is a properly immersed minimal surface in Nil3 that lies on one side of some entire minimal graph G, then S is the image of G by a vertical translation. If S is a properly immersed minimal surface in Sol3 that lies on one side of a special plane Et (see the discussion just before Theorem 1.5 for the definition of a special plane in Sol3), then S is the special plane Eu for some u 2 R.

We construct a generalized Witten genus for spinc manifolds, which takes values in level 1 modular forms with integral Fourier expansion on a class of spinc manifolds called stringc manifolds. We also construct a mod 2 analogue of the Witten genus for 8k+2 dimensional spin manifolds. The Landweber-Stong type vanishing theorems are proven for the generalizedWitten genus and the mod 2 Witten genus on stringc and string (generalized) complete intersections in (product of) complex projective spaces respectively.

The deformation theory of hyperbolic and Euclidean cone-manifolds with all cone angles less than 2 plays an important role in many problems in low-dimensional topology and in the geometrization of 3-manifolds. Furthermore, various old conjectures dating back to Stoker about the moduli space of convex hyperbolic and Euclidean polyhedra can be reduced to the study of deformations of cone-manifolds by doubling a polyhedron across its faces. This deformation theory has been understood by Hodgson and Kerckhoff [7] when the singular set has no vertices, and by Weiß [32] when the cone angles are less than . We prove here an infinitesimal rigidity result valid for cone angles less than 2, stating that infinitesimal deformations which leave the dihedral angles fixed are trivial in the hyperbolic case, and reduce to some simple deformations in the Euclidean case. The method is to treat this as a problem concerning the deformation theory of singular Einstein metrics, and to apply analytic methods about elliptic operators on stratified spaces. This work is an important ingredient in the local deformation theory of cone-manifolds by the second author [22]; see also the concurrent work by Weiß [33].

We prove that if a complete, properly embedded, finite-topology minimal surface in S2×R contains a line, then its ends are asymptotic to helicoids, and that if the surface is an annulus, it must be a helicoid.

A Schubert class  in the Grassmannian G(k, n) is rigid if the only proper subvarieties representing that class are Schubert varieties . We prove that a Schubert class  is rigid if and only if it is defined by a partition  satisfying a simple numerical criterion. If  fails this criterion, then there is a corresponding hyperplane class in another Grassmannian G(k0, n0) such that the deformations of the hyperplane in G(k0, n0) yield non-trivial deformations of the Schubert variety . We also prove that, if a partition  contains a sub-partition defining a rigid and singular Schubert class in another Grassmannian G(k0, n0), then there does not exist a smooth subvariety of G(k, n) representing .

Necessary and sufficient conditions for the discreteness of the Laplacian on a noncompact Riemannian manifold M are established in terms of the isocapacitary function of M. The relevant capacity takes a different form according to whether M has finite or infinite volume. Conditions involving the more standard isoperimetric function of M can also be derived, but they are only sufficient in general, as we demonstrate by concrete examples.

We prove that the higher harmonic signature of an even dimensional oriented Riemannian foliation F of a compact Riemannian manifold M with coefficients in a leafwise U(p, q)-flat complex bundle is a leafwise homotopy invariant. We also prove the leafwise homotopy invariance of the twisted higher Betti classes. Consequences for the Novikov conjecture for foliations and for groups are investigated.

We give existence results for simple closed curves with prescribed geodesic curvature on S2, which correspond to periodic orbits of a charge in a magnetic field.

We apply the mean curvature flow to deform symplectomorphisms of CP^n. In particular, we prove that, for each dimension n, there exists a constant , explicitly computable, such that anypinched symplectomorphism of CP^n is symplectically isotopic to a biholomorphic isometry.

We give a complete classification of locally strongly convex affine hypersurfaces of Rn+1 with parallel cubic form with respect to the Levi-Civita connection of the affine Berwald-Blaschke metric. It turns out that all such affine hypersurfaces are quadrics or can be obtained by applying repeatedly the Calabi product construction of hyperbolic affine hyperspheres, using as building blocks either the hyperboloid, or the standard immersion of one of the symmetric spaces SL(m,R)/SO(m), SL(m,C)/SU(m), SU 2m /Sp(m), or E6(−26)/F4.

A piecewise flat manifold is a triangulated manifold given a geometry by specifying edge lengths (lengths of 1-simplices) and specifying that all simplices are Euclidean. We consider the variation of angles of piecewise flat manifolds as the geometry varies in a particular way, which we call a conformal variation. This variation generalizes variations within the class of circles with fixed intersection angles (such as circle packings) as well as other formulations of conformal variation of piecewise flat manifolds previously suggested. We describe the angle derivatives of the angles in two-and three-dimensional piecewise flat manifolds, giving rise to formulas for the derivatives of curvatures. The formulas for derivatives of curvature resemble the formulas for the change of scalar curvature under a conformal variation of Riemannian metric. They allow us to explicitly describe the variation of certain curvature functionals, including Regge’s formulation of the Einstein-Hilbert functional (total scalar curvature), and to consider convexity of these functionals. They also allow us to prove rigidity theorems for certain analogues of constant curvature and Einstein manifolds in the piecewise flat setting.

Inspired by the Gromov-Hausdorff distance, we define a new notion called the intrinsic flat distance between oriented m dimensional Riemannian manifolds with boundary by isometrically embedding the manifolds into a common metric space, measuring the flat distance between them and taking an infimum over all isometric embeddings and all common metric spaces. This is made rigorous by applying Ambrosio-Kirchheim’s extension of FedererFleming’s notion of integral currents to arbitrary metric spaces. We prove the intrinsic flat distance between two compact oriented Riemannian manifolds is zero iff they have an orientation preserving isometry between them. Using the theory of AmbrosioKirchheim, we study converging sequences of manifolds and their limits, which are in a class of metric spaces that we call integral current spaces. We describe the properties of such spaces including the fact that they are countably Hm rectifiable spaces and present numerous examples.