Making use of the extended flux homomorphism defined in [13] on the group Symp§g of symplectomorphisms of a closed ori- ented surface §g of genus g ≥ 2, we introduce new characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with symplectic, equivalently area-preserving, total holonomy. These characteristic classes are stable with respect to g and we show that they are highly non- trivial. We also prove that the second homology of the group Ham§g of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of §g, equipped with the discrete topology, is very large for all g ≥ 2.

We relate previously defined quantum characteristic classes to Morse theoretic aspects of the Hofer length functional on Ham (M, ω). As an application we prove a theorem which can be interpreted as stating that this functional is “virtually” a perfect Morse-Bott functional. This can be applied to study the topology and Hofer geometry of Ham(M, ω). We also use this to give a prediction for the index of some geodesics for this functional, which was recently partially verified by Yael Karshon and Jennifer Slimowitz[5].

We show the regularity of, and derive a-priori estimates for (weakly) harmonic maps from a Riemannian manifold into a Euclidean sphere under the assumption that the image avoids some neighborhood of a half-equator. The proofs combine constructions of strictly convex functions and the regularity theory of quasilinear elliptic systems. We apply these results to the spherical and Euclidean Bernstein problems for minimal hypersurfaces, obtaining new conditions under which compact minimal hypersurfaces in spheres or complete minimal hypersurfaces in Euclidean spaces are trivial.

In this article we show how to compute the semiclassical spectral measure associated with the Schr¨odinger operator on Rn, and, by examining the first few terms in the asymptotic expansion of this measure, obtain inverse spectral results in one and two dimensions. (In particular we show that for the Schr¨odinger operator on R2 with a radially symmetric electric potential, V , and magnetic potential, B, both V and B are spectrally determined.) We also show that in one dimension there is a very simple explicit identity relating the spectral measure of the Schr¨odinger operator with its Birkhoff canonical form.

In this paper, we establish the optimal error estimate of the particle method for a family of nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equations, or the so-called b-equation. The b-equation, including the Camassa-Holm equation and the Degasperis-Procesi equation, has many applications in diverse scientific fields. The particle method is an approximation of the b-equation in Lagrangian representation. We also prove short-time existence, uniqueness and regularity of the Lagrangian representation of the b-equation.