We will introduce a quantity which measures the singularity of a plurisubharmonic function$φ$relative to another plurisubharmonic function$ψ$, at a point$a$. We denote this quantity by$ν$_{$a$,$ψ$}($φ$). It can be seen as a generalization of the classical Lelong number in a natural way: if$ψ$=($n$−1)log| ⋅ −$a$|, where$n$is the dimension of the set where$φ$is defined, then$ν$_{$a$,$ψ$}($φ$) coincides with the classical Lelong number of$φ$at the point$a$. The main theorem of this article says that the upper level sets of our generalized Lelong number, i.e. the sets of the form {$z$:$ν$_{$z$,$ψ$}($φ$)≥$c$} where$c$>0, are in fact analytic sets, provided that the$weight$$ψ$satisfies some additional conditions.

We show that Thurston’s skinning maps of Teichmüller space have finite fibers. The proof centers around a study of two subvarieties of the $${{\rm SL}_2(\mathbb{C})}$$ character variety of a surface—one associated with complex projective structures, and the other associated with a 3-manifold. Using the Morgan–Shalen compactification of the character variety and author’s results on holonomy limits of complex projective structures, we show that these subvarieties have only a discrete set of intersections.

We introduce and study the notion of singular hermitian metrics on holomorphic vector bundles, following Berndtsson and Păun. We define what it means for such a metric to be positively and negatively curved in the sense of Griffiths and investigate the assumptions needed in order to locally define the curvature Θ^{$h$}as a matrix of currents. We then proceed to show that such metrics can be regularised in such a way that the corresponding curvature tensors converge weakly to Θ^{$h$}. Finally we define what it means for$h$to be strictly negatively curved in the sense of Nakano and show that it is possible to regularise such metrics with a sequence of smooth, strictly Nakano negative metrics.

We discuss the Kodaira problem for uniruled Kähler spaces. Building on a construction due to Voisin, we give an example of a uniruled Kähler space X such that every run of the K_X-MMP immediately terminates with a Mori fibre space, yet X does not admit an algebraic approximation. Our example also shows that for a Mori fibration, approximability of the base does not imply approximability of the total space.

Rigidity question have attracted much interest in the past. In the compact case, we have the famous work of Calabi and Vesentini [3] and Mostow [17]. Whereas Calabi and Vesentini proved a local version, namely that compact quotients of bounded symmetric domains admit no nontrivial deformations in case the domain is irreducible and of complex dimension at least 2, Mostow proved a global rigidity result, at the expense, however, of working only within the class of quotients of symmetric domains. Mostow's work is based on quasiconformal mappings. A different analytic approach was recently undertaken by Siu [22]. If M is a compact K~ ihler manifold diffeomorphic (or, more generally, homotopically equivalent) to a quotient N of an irreducible bounded symmetric domain, he studied a harmonic homotopy equivalence the existence of which is assured by the theorem of EeUs and Sampson, and demonstrated that