We prove the classical Yano-Obata conjecture by showing that the connected component of the group of h-projective transformations of a closed, connected Riemannian K¨ahler manifold consists of isometries unless the manifold is the complex projective space with the standard Fubini-Study metric (up to a constant).

Let fn → f0 be a convergent sequence of rational maps, preserving critical relations, and f0 be geometrically finite with parabolic points. It is known that for some unlucky choices of sequences fn,the Julia sets J(fn) and their Hausdorff dimensions may fail to converge as n → ∞. Our main result here is to prove the convergence of J(fn) and H.dim J(fn) for generic sequences fn. The same conclusion was obtained earlier, with stronger hypotheses on the sequence fn, by Bodart-Zinsmeister and then by McMullen. We characterize those choices of fn by means of flows of appropriate polynomial vector fields (following Douady-Estrada-Sentenac). We first prove an independent result about the (s-dimensional) length of separatrices of such flows, and then use it to estimate tails of Poincar´e series. This, together with existing techniques,provides the desired control of conformal densities and Hausdorff dimensions. Our method may be applied to other problems relatedto parabolic perturbations.

We give a complete diffeomorphism classification of 1-connected closed manifolds M with integral homology H¤(M) ∼= Z ⊕ Z ⊕ Z, provided that dim(M) 6= 4.

In this paper we prove that given a point p ∈ Mn, where Mn is a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension n, the length of a shortest geodesic loop lp(Mn) at this point is bounded above by 2nd, where d is the diameter of Mn. Moreover, we show that on a closed simply connected Riemannian manifold Mn with a nontrivial second homotopy group there either exist at least three geodesic loops of length less than or equal to 2d at each point of Mn, or the length of a shortest closed geodesic on Mn is bounded from above by 4d.

Compact locally maximal hyperbolic sets are studied via geometrically defined functional spaces that take advantage of the smoothness of the map in a neighborhood of the hyperbolic set. This provides a self-contained theory that not only reproduces all the known classical results, but also gives new insights on the statistical properties of these systems.