In this note the fractional analytic index, for a projective elliptic operator associated to an Azumaya bundle, of [5] is related to the equivariant index of [1, 6] for an associated transversally elliptic operator.

We describe a new family of representations of 1() in PU(2,1), where  is a hyperbolic Riemann surface with at least one deleted point. This family is obtained by a bending process associated to an ideal triangulation of . We give an explicit description of this family by describing a coordinates system in the spirit of shear coordinates on the Teichm¨uller space. We identify within this family new examples of discrete, faithful, and type-preserving representations of 1(). In turn, we obtain a 1-parameter family of embeddings of the Teichm¨uller space of  in the PU(2,1)-representation variety of 1(). These results generalise to arbitrary  the results obtained in [42] for the 1-punctured torus.

In a series of works, one of the authors has developed with J.- M. Hwang a geometric theory of uniruled projective manifolds, especially those of Picard number 1, basing on the study of varieties of minimal rational tangents. A fundamental result in this theory is a principle of analytic continuation under very mild assumptions,called Cartan-Fubini extension, of biholomorphisms between connected open subsets of two Fano manifolds of Picard number 1 which preserve varieties of minimal rational tangents. In this article we develop a generalization of Cartan-Fubini extension for non-equidimensional holomorphic immersions from a connected open subset of a Fano manifold of Picard number 1 into a uniruled projective manifold, under the assumptions that the map sends varieties of minimal rational tangents onto linear sections of varieties of minimal rational tangents and that it satisfies a mild geometric condition formulated in terms of second fundamental forms on varieties of minimal rational tangents. Formerly such a result was known only in the very special case of irreducible Hermitian symmetric manifolds of rank at least two, and the proof relied on the existence of flattening coordinates, viz.,Harish-Chandra coordinates, with respect to which the varieties of minimal rational tangents form a constant family. The proof of the main result, which is based on the deformation theory of rational curves, is differential-geometric in nature and is applicable to the general situation of uniruled projective manifolds without any assumption on the existence of special coordinate systems. As an application, we give a characterization of standard embeddings for certain pairs of rational homogeneous manifolds in terms of embeddings of varieties of minimal rational tangents.

We study harmonic maps from an admissible flat simplicial complex to a non-positively curved Riemannian manifold. Our main regularity theorem is that these maps are C1, at the interfaces of the top-dimensional simplices in addition to satisfying a balancing condition. If we assume that the domain is a 2-complex,then these maps are C1. As an application, we show that the regularity, the balancing condition and a Bochner formula lead to rigidity and vanishing theorems for harmonic maps. Furthermore, we give an explicit relationship between our techniques and those obtained via combinatorial methods.

The limiting behavior of the normalized KÄahler-Ricci °ow for manifolds with positive ¯rst Chern class is examined under certain stability conditions. First, it is shown that if the Mabuchi Kenergy is bounded from below, then the scalar curvature converges uniformly to a constant. Second, it is shown that if the Mabuchi Kenergy is bounded from below and if the lowest positive eigenvalue of the ¹@y ¹@ operator on smooth vector ¯elds is bounded away from0 along the °ow, then the metrics converge exponentially fast in C1 to a KÄahler-Einstein metric.