Let$C$and$C$′ be two smooth self-transverse immersions of$S$^{1}into ℝ^{2}. Both$C$and$C$′ subdivide the plane into a number of disks and one unbounded component. An isotopy of the plane which takes$C$to$C$′ induces a one-to-one correspondence between the disks of$C$and$C$′. An obvious necessary condition for there to exist an area-preserving isotopy of the plane taking$C$to$C$′ is that there exists an isotopy for which the area of every disk of$C$equals that of the corresponding disk of$C$′. In this paper we show that this is also a sufficient condition.

Let $K$ be a self-similar set satisfying the open set condition. Following Kaimanovich’s elegant idea, it has been proved that on the symbolic space $X$ of $K$ a natural augmented tree structure $E$ exists; it is hyperbolic, and the hyperbolic boundary $\partial_H X$ with the Gromov metric is H\"older equivalent to $K$. In this paper we consider certain reversible random walks with return ratio $0 < \lambda < 1$ on $(X,E)$. We show that the Martin boundary ${\mathcal M}$ can be identified with $\partial_H X$ and $K$. With this setup and a device of Silverstein, we obtain precise estimates of the Martin kernel and the Na\"im kernel in terms of the Gromov product. Moreover, the Naïm kernel turns out to be a jump kernel satisfying the estimate $\Theta (\xi,\eta) \asymp |\xi-\eta|^{-(\alpha+\beta)}$, where $\alpha$ is the Hausdorff dimension of $K$ and $\beta$ depends on $\lambda$. For suitable $\beta$, the kernel defines a regular non-local Dirichlet form on $K$. This extends the results of Kigami concerning random walks on certain trees with Cantor-type sets as boundaries.

In this paper, we prove the Lipschitz regularity of continuous harmonic maps from an finite dimensional Alexandrov space to a compact smooth Riemannian manifold. This solves a conjecture of F. H. Lin in [36]. The proof extends the argument of Huang-Wang [26].

Introduction. The classical Schwarz-Pick lemma states that any holomorphic map of the unit disk into itself decreases the Poincare metric. Later Ahlfors generalized this lemma to holomorphic mappings between two Riemann surfaces where curvatures of these Riemann surfaces were used in a very explicit way. More recently, Chern initiated the study of holomorphic mappings between higher-dimensional complex manifold by generalizing the Ahlfors lemma to these spaces. Then this lemma was further extended by Kobayashi, Griffiths, Wu and others. It plays a very important role in their theory. In this note, we shall prove the following generalization of the Schwarz lemma.

We prove that a proper geodesic metric space has non-positive curvature in the sense of Alexandrov if and only if it satisfies the Euclidean isoperimetric inequality for curves. Our result extends to non-geodesic spaces and non-zero curvature bounds.