Let M be a compact Criemannian manifold of nonpositive curvature1 and with fundamental group . It is well known [8, p. 102] that M is a K (, 1) and thus completely determined up to homotopy type by . In light of this fact it is natural to ask to what extent the riemannian structure of M is determined by the structure of , and the intent of this paper is to demonstrate that rather strong implications of this sort exist. In the case that M has strictly negative curvature, the group is known to be highly noncommutative. Every abelian, in fact, every solvable, subgroup of is cyclic [3]. It is therefore a plausible conjecture that in the nonpositive curvature case, will possess large amounts of commutativity only under special geometric circumstances. We shall show that this is true, that indeed those properties of which involve commutativity have a dramatic reflection in the riemannian structure of M.

It was in the early nineteen thirties that Douglas and Radd solved the Plateau problem for a rectifiable Jordan curve in Euclidean space. The minimal surfaces that they obtained are realized by conformal harmonic maps from the unit disk. In 1948 Morrey generalized the theorem of Douglas and Radd to minimal surfaces in a homogeneously regular Riemannian manifold. In both cases the solutions are defective as they may possess branch points. It was not until 1968 that Osserman [-24] was able to prove that interior branch points do not exist on the Douglas-Radd-Morrey solution.(Osserman's theorem in this full generality was proved by Alt [-2, 3] and Gulliver [8].) If the Jordan curve is real analytic, Gulliver and Lesley [9] showed that the solution surface is free of branch points even on its boundary. Hence, at least in this case, we know that the Douglas-Radd-Morrey solution is an immersion and represents a

Let M be a complete non-compact Riemannian manifold whose sectional curvature is bounded between two constants-k and K. Then one expects that the heat diffusion in such a manifold behaves like the heat diffusion in Euclidean space. The purpose of this paper is to give a justi-fication of such a statement.

Hence the energy defines a functional on the space of Lipshitz maps between M and M'. Critical points of this functional are called harmonic maps. These maps were studied by Bochner, Morrey, Rauch, Eells and Sampson, Hartman, Uhlenbeck, Hamilton, Hildebrandt and others. The first fundamental result was due to Eells and Sampson [3] who proved that, in case M'has non-positive sectional curvature, each map from M to M'is homotopic to a harmonic map.(This result was then extended by Hamilton [8] to the case where both M and M'are allowed to have boundary.) Later Hartman [7] was able to prove the harmonic map is unique in each homotopy class if M'has strictly negative curvature. This last result of Hartman leads one to believe that harmonic maps between compact manifolds with negative curvature must enjoy a lot of nice properties. In fact, a few years ago, B. Lawson and the second author conjectured

Let N be a three dimensional Riemannian manifold. Let E be a closed embedded surface in N. Then it is a question of basic interest to see whether one can deform: in its isotopy class to some" canonical" embedded surface. From the point of view of geometry, a natural" canonical" surface will be the extremal surface of some functional defined on the space of embedded surfaces. The simplest functional is the area functional. The extremal surface of the area functional is called the minimal surface. Such minimal surfaces were used extensively by Meeks-Yau [MY21 in studying group actions on three dimensional manifolds.

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Let M be a complete two-dimensional surface immersed into the three-dimensional Euclidean space. Then a classical theorem of Hilbert says that when the curvature of M is a non-zero constant, M must be the sphere. On the other hand, when the curvature of M is zero, a theorem of Hartman-Nirenberg [4] says that M must be a plane or a cylinder. These two theorems complete the classification of complete surfaces with constant curvature in R 3.

One of the natural generalizations of conformal structure on a two dimensional surface is a conformally flat structure on an n-manifold. In higher dimensions, not every manifold admits such a structure and it is a difficult problem to give a good classification of conformally flat manifolds. Recall that conformally flat Riemannian manifolds are manifolds whose metrics are locally conformally equivalent to the Euclidean metric. Kuiper [Kul, Ku2] was the first to study the global properties of these manifolds. He classified those compact conformally flat manifolds with abelian fundamental group. For dimensions greater than two, the Liouville theorem tells us that the conformal transformations of S" are determined locally and are given by M6bius transformations. Hence by a standard monodromy argument, a simply connected conformally flat manifold (with dimension> 3) has a conformal immersion into S" which is unique up to

In this paper, we study the question of which compact manifolds admit a metric with positive scalar curvature. Scalar curvature is perhaps the weakest invariant among all the well-known invariants constructed from the curvature tensor. It measures the deviation of the Riemannian volume of the geodesic ball from the euclidean volume of the geodesic ball. As a result, it does not tell us much of the behavior of the geodesics in the manifold. Therefore it was remarkable that in 1963, Lichnerowicz [i] was able to prove the theorem that on a compact spin manifold with positive scalar curvature, there is no harmonic spinor. Applying

Let M be a compact Riemannian manifold with a fixed conformal structure. Then we introduce the concept of conformal volume of M in the following manner. For each branched conformal immersion q9 of M into the unit sphere S n, we consider the set of all branched conformal immersions obtained by composition of qo with the conformal automorphisms of S". We let Vc (n, qg) be the maximum volume of these branched immersions. The conformal volume of M is defined to be the infimum of V.(n, q0) where qo ranges over all branched conformal immersions of M into the unit sphere S". In this paper, we study the case when M is a compact surface and we call the conformal volume of M to be the conformal area of M. We demonstrate that this conformal invariant is non-trivial. In fact, we prove that if there exists a minimal immersion of M into S" where coordinate functions are first eigenfunctions, then the conformal area of M is given by the area of M with respect to the induced metric. This enables us to compute the conformal area for several surfaces. For example, the conformal area of RP z is 6n and the conformal area of the square torus is 27c 2. We believe that the computation of the conformal area for general surfaces will be very important in studying the geometry of compact surfaces. We demonstrate this claim by applying the concept of conformal area to two different branches of surface theory. The first application is to study the total curvature of a compact surface in R". This problem has a long history. Fenchel and Fary [9] proved that for a closed curve o in R", Slk [> 27c where k is its curvature. Then Milnor [12] r proved that 5lk]> 4~ z if cr is

Riemannian geometry is characterized, and research is oriented towards and shaped by concepts (geodesics, connections, curvature,...) and objectives, in particular to understand certain classes of (compact) Riemannian manifolds defined by curvature conditions (constant or positive or negative curvature,...). By way of contrast, geometric analysis is a perhaps somewhat less systematic collection of techniques, for solving extremal problems naturally arising in geometry and for investigating and characterizing their solutions. It turns out that the two fields complement each other very well; geometric analysis offers tools for solving difficult problems in geometry, and Riemannian geometry stimulates progress in geometric analysis by setting ambitious goals.

We study the rigidity results for self-shrinkers in Euclidean space by restriction of the image under the Gauss map. The geometric properties of the target manifolds carry into effect. In the self-shrinking hypersurface situation Theorem 3.1and Theorem 3.2 not only improve the previous results, but also are optimal. In higher codimensional case, using geometric properties of the Grassmannian manifolds (the target manifolds of the Gauss map) we give a rigidity theorem for self-shrinking graphs.

For any n-dimensional smooth manifold $\Sigma$, we show that all the singularities of the mean curvature flow with any initial mean convex hypersurface in $\Sigma$ are cylindrical (of convex type) if the flow converges to a smooth hypersurface $M_\infty$ (maybe empty) at infinity. Previously this was shown (i) for n$\leq$7, and (ii) for arbitrary n up to the first singular time without the smooth condition on $M_\infty$.

We study minimal hypersurfaces in manifolds of non-negative Ricci curvature, Euclidean volume growth and quadratic curvature decay at infinity. By comparison with capped spherical cones, we identify a precise borderline for the Ricci curvature decay. Above this value, no complete area-minimizing hypersurfaces exist. Below this value, in contrast, we construct examples.

We study minimal graphic functions on complete Riemannian manifolds $\Sigma$ with non-negative Ricci curvature, Euclidean volume growth and quadratic curvature decay. We derive global bounds for the gradients for minimal graphic functions of linear growth only on one side. Then we can obtain a Liouville type theorem with such growth via splitting for tangent cones of $\Sigma$ at infinity. When, in contrast, we do not impose any growth restrictions for minimal graphic functions, we also obtain a Liouville type theorem under a certain non-radial Ricci curvature decay condition on $\Sigma$. In particular, the borderline for the Ricci curvature decay is sharp by our example in the last section.

In this short note, we give a new proof of a theorem of Arezzo-Tian on the existence of smooth geodesic rays tamed by a special degeneration with smooth central fiber.

Given a smooth polarized Riemann surface (X, L) endowed with a hyperbolic metric \omega with cusp singularities along a divisor D, we show the L^ 2 projective embedding of (X, D) defined by L^ k is asymptotically almost balanced in a weighted sense. The proof depends on sufficiently precise understanding of the behavior of the Bergman kernel in three regions, with the most crucial one being the neck region around D. This is the first step towards understanding the algebro-geometric stability of extremal Khler metrics with singularities.

We prove that a pair (X, D) with X Fano and D a smooth anti-canonical divisor is K-unstable for negative angles, and K-semistable for zero angle.

We prove some structure results for transversely reducible Sasaki manifolds. In particular, we show a Sasaki manifold with positive Ricci curvature is transversely irreducible, and so join (product) construction cannot be generalized to irregular SasakiEinstein manifolds, as opposed to the quasi-regular case done by WangZiller and BoyerGalicki. As an application, we classify compact Sasaki manifolds with nonnegative transverse bisectional curvature, which can be viewed as the generalized Frankel conjecture in Sasaki geometry.

We classify simply connected compact Sasaki manifolds of dimension 2 n+ 1 with positive transverse bisectional curvature. In particular, the Khler cone corresponding to such manifolds must be bi-holomorphic to C n+ 1\{0}. As an application we recover the theorem of Mori and SiuYau on the Frankel conjecture and extend it to certain orbifold version. The main idea is to deform such Sasaki manifolds to the standard round sphere in two steps, both fixing the complex structure on the Khler cone. First, we deform the metric along the SasakiRicci flow and obtain a limit SasakiRicci soliton with positive transverse bisectional curvature. Then by varying the Reeb vector field which essentially decreases the volume functional, we deform the SasakiRicci soliton to a SasakiEinstein metric with positive transverse bisectional curvature, ie a round sphere. The second deformation is only possible when one treats

On a Fano manifold, we prove that the KhlerRicci flow starting from a Khler metric in the anti-canonical class which is sufficiently close to a KhlerEinstein metric must converge in a polynomial rate to a KhlerEinstein metric. The convergence cannot happen in general if we study the flow on the level of Khler potentials. Instead we exploit the interpretation of the Ricci flow as the gradient flow of Perelman's functional. This involves modifying the Ricci flow by a canonical family of gauges. In particular, the complex structure of the limit could be different in general. The main technical ingredient is a Lojasiewicz type inequality for Perelman's functional near a critical point.

We prove that constant scalar curvature Khler metric adjacent to a fixed Khler class is unique up to isomorphism. The proof is based on the study of a fourth order evolution equation, namely, the Calabi flow, from a new geometric perspective, and on the geometry of the space of Khler metrics.

We prove that the GromovHausdorff compactification of the moduli space of KhlerEinstein Del Pezzo surfaces in each degree agrees with certain algebro-geometric compactification. In particular, this recovers Tians theorem on the existence of KhlerEinstein metrics on smooth Del Pezzo surfaces and classifies all the degenerations of such metrics. The proof is based on a combination of both algebraic and differential geometric techniques.

In this paper we introduce the interpolationdegeneration strategy to study KhlerEinstein metrics on a smooth Fano manifold with cone singularities along a smooth divisor that is proportional to the anti-canonical divisor. By interpolation we show the angles in (0, 2] that admit a conical KhlerEinstein metric form a connected interval, and by degeneration we determine the boundary of the interval in some important cases. As a first application, we show that there exists a KhlerEinstein metric on P 2 with cone singularity along a smooth conic (degree 2) curve if and only if the angle is in (/2, 2]. When the angle is 2/3 this proves the existence of a SasakiEinstein metric on the link of a three dimensional <i>A</i> ₂ singularity, and thus answers a question posed by GauntlettMartelliSparksYau. As a second application we prove a version of Donaldsons conjecture about conical Khler

We annnounce a proof of the fact that a K-stable Fano manifold admits a Kahler-Einstein metric and give a brief outline of the proof.