In this paper, we study the shape of the min-max minimal hypersurface produced by Almgren-Pitts-Schoen-Simon \cite{AF62, AF65, P81, SS81} in a Riemannian manifold $(M^{n+1}, g)$ of positive Ricci curvature for all dimensions. The min-max hypersurface has a singular set of Hausdorff codimension $7$. We characterize the Morse index, area and multiplicity of this singular min-max hypersurface. In particular, we show that the min-max hypersurface is either orientable and has Morse index one, or is a double cover of a non-orientable stable minimal hypersurface. As an essential technical tool, we prove a stronger version of the discretization theorem. The discretization theorem, first developed by Marques-Neves in their proof of the Willmore conjecture \cite{MN12}, is a bridge to connect sweepouts appearing naturally in geometry to sweepouts used in the min-max theory. Our result removes a critical assumption of \cite{MN12}, called the no mass concentration condition, and hence confirms a conjecture by Marques-Neves in \cite{MN12}.

We prove a general maximum principle at infinity for properly immersed minimal surfaces with boundary in R^3. An important corollary of this maximum principle at infinity is the existence of a fixed sized regular neighborhood for any properly embedded minimal surface of bounded curvature.

We show that the first Johnson subgroup of the mapping class group of a surface  of genus greater than 1 acts ergodically on the moduli space of representations of π1() in SU2. Our proof relies on a local description of the latter space around the trivial representation and on the Taylor expansion of trace functions.

We obtain a growth estimate for the number of lattice points inside any Q-Gorenstein cone. Our proof uses the result of Futaki-Ono-Wang on Sasaki-Einstein metric for the toric Sasakian manifold associated to the cone, a Yau’s inequality, and the Kawasaki-Riemann-Roch formula for orbifolds.

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