We describe a natural decomposition of a normal complex surface singularity ($X$, 0) into its “thick” and “thin” parts. The former is essentially metrically conical, while the latter shrinks rapidly in thickness as it approaches the origin. The thin part is empty if and only if the singularity is metrically conical; the link of the singularity is then Seifert fibered. In general the thin part will not be empty, in which case it always carries essential topology. Our decomposition has some analogy with the Margulis thick-thin decomposition for a negatively curved manifold. However, the geometric behavior is very different; for example, often most of the topology of a normal surface singularity is concentrated in the thin parts.

We prove that for any free ergodic probability measure-preserving action $${\mathbb{F}_n \curvearrowright (X, \mu)}$$ of a free group on$n$generators $${\mathbb{F}_n, 2\leq n \leq \infty}$$ , the associated group measure space II_{1}factor $${L^\infty (X)\rtimes \mathbb{F}_n}$$ has$L$^{∞}($X$) as its unique Cartan subalgebra, up to unitary conjugacy. We deduce that group measure space II_{1}factors arising from actions of free groups with different number of generators are never isomorphic. We actually prove unique Cartan decomposition results for II_{1}factors arising from arbitrary actions of a much larger family of groups, including all free products of amenable groups and their direct products.

We consider the quintic generalized Korteweg–de Vries equation (gKdV) $$u_t + (u_{xx} + u^5)_x =0,$$ which is a canonical mass critical problem, for initial data in$H$^{1}close to the soliton. In earlier works on this problem, finite- or infinite-time blow up was proved for non-positive energy solutions, and the solitary wave was shown to be the universal blow-up profile, see [16], [26] and [20]. For well-localized initial data, finite-time blow up with an upper bound on blow-up rate was obtained in [18].

We establish an analytic interpretation for the index of certain transversally elliptic symbols on non-compact manifolds. By using this interpretation, we establish a geometric quantization formula for a Hamiltonian action of a compact Lie group acting on a non-compact symplectic manifold with proper moment map. In particular, we present a solution to a conjecture of Michèle Vergne in her ICM 2006 plenary lecture.

In this note, we prove a sharp lower bound for the log canonical threshold of a plurisubharmonic function $${\varphi}$$ with an isolated singularity at 0 in an open subset of $${\mathbb{C}^n}$$ . This threshold is defined as the supremum of constants$c$> 0 such that $${e^{-2c\varphi}}$$ is integrable on a neighborhood of 0. We relate $${c(\varphi)}$$ to the intermediate multiplicity numbers $${e_j(\varphi)}$$ , defined as the Lelong numbers of $${(dd^c\varphi)^j}$$ at 0 (so that in particular $${e_0(\varphi)=1}$$ ). Our main result is that $${c(\varphi)\geqslant\sum_{j=0}^{n-1} e_j(\varphi)/e_{j+1}(\varphi)}$$ . This inequality is shown to be sharp; it simultaneously improves the classical result $${c(\varphi)\geqslant 1/e_1(\varphi)}$$ due to Skoda, as well as the lower estimate $${c(\varphi)\geqslant n/e_n(\varphi)^{1/n}}$$ which has received crucial applications to birational geometry in recent years. The proof consists in a reduction to the toric case, i.e. singularities arising from monomial ideals.