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.

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An almost K\"ahler structure on a symplectic manifold (N,ω) consists of a Riemannian metric g and an almost complex structure J such that the symplectic form ω satisfies ω(⋅,⋅)=g(J(⋅),⋅) . Any symplectic manifold admits an almost K\"ahler structure and we refer to (N,ω,g,J) as an almost K\"ahler manifold. In this article, we propose a natural evolution equation to investigate the deformation of Lagrangian submanifolds in almost K\"ahler manifolds. A metric and complex connection $\hn$ on TN defines a generalized mean curvature vector field along any Lagrangian submanifold M of N . We study the evolution of M along this vector field, which turns out to be a Lagrangian deformation, as long as the connection $\hn$ satisfies an Einstein condition. This can be viewed as a generalization of the classical Lagrangian mean curvature flow in K\"ahler-Einstein manifolds where the connection $\hn$ is the Levi-Civita connection of g . Our result applies to the important case of Lagrangian submanifolds in a cotangent bundle equipped with the canonical almost K\"ahler structure and to other generalization of Lagrangian mean curvature flows, such as the flow considered by Behrndt \cite{b} in K\"ahler manifolds that are almost Einstein.

This is the second in a series of papers on a new equivariant cohomology that takes values in a vertex algebra. In an earlier paper, the first two authors gave a construction of the cohomology functor on the category of O(sg) algebras. The new cohomology theory can be viewed as a kind of "chiralization'' of the classical equivariant cohomology, the latter being defined on the category of $G^*$ algebras a la H. Cartan. In this paper, we further develop the chiral theory by first extending it to allow a much larger class of algebras which we call sg[t] algebras. In the geometrical setting, our principal example of an O(sg) algebra is the chiral de Rham complex Q(M) of a G manifold M. There is an interesting subalgebra of Q(M) which does not admit a full O(sg) algebra structure but retains the structure of an sg[t] algebra, enough for us to define its chiral equivariant cohomology. The latter then turns out to have many surprising features that allows us to delineate a number of interesting geometric aspects of the G manifold M, sometimes in ways that are quite different from the classical theory.

We establish a boundary maximum principle for free boundary minimal submanifolds in a Riemannian manifold with boundary, in any dimension and codimension. Our result holds more generally in the context of varifolds.