Let be the scattering relation on a compact Riemannian manifold M with non-necessarily convex boundary, that maps initial points of geodesic rays on the boundary and initial directions to the outgoing point on the boundary and the outgoing direction. Let . be the length of that geodesic ray. We study the question of whether the metric g is uniquely determined, up to an isometry, by knowledge of 冃 and . restricted on some subset D. We allow possible conjugate points but we assume that the conormal bundle of the geodesics issued from D covers T M; and that those geodesics have no conjugate points. Under an additional topological assumption, we prove that 冃 and . restricted to D uniquely recover an isometric copy of g locally near generic metrics, and in particular, near real analytic ones.

In this paper, we derive some local a priori estimates for the Ricci flow. This gives rise to some strong uniqueness theorems. As a corollary, let g(t) be a smooth complete solution to the Ricci flow on R3, with the canonical Euclidean metric E as initial data, then g(t) is trivial, i.e. g(t) ≡ E.

Luttinger surgery is used to produce minimal symplectic 4- manifolds with small Euler characteristics. We construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP2#3CP 2 , and which contains a genus two symplectic surface with trivial normal bundle and simply-connected complement. We also construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to 3CP2#5CP 2 , and which contains two disjoint essential Lagrangian tori such that the complement of the union of the tori is simply-connected. These examples are used to construct minimal symplectic manifolds with Euler characteristic 6 and fundamental group Z, Z3, or Z/p ⊕ Z/q ⊕ Z/r for integers p, q, r. Given a group G presented with g generators and r relations, a symplectic 4-manifold with fundamental group G and Euler characteristic 10 + 6(g + r) is constructed.