In 1976, the author (see the open problem section in [3]) asked the following question: if p is a function defined on i? 3, what is the condition on p so that there is a sphere in R3 whose mean curvature is given by p. There were important works by Treibergs-Wei [2] and others on this question. Recently in a lecture that I gave in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I realized that my work with R. Schoen on the existence of black hole can be used to settle the prescribed mean curvature question for a large class of p.

We discuss the uniruledness of various base loci of linear systems related to the canonical divisor. In particular we prove that the stable base locus of the canonical divisor of a smooth projective variety of general type is covered by rational curves.

Ricci flow deforms the Riemannian metric proportionally to the curvature, such that the curvature evolves according to a heat diffusion process and eventually becomes constant everywhere. Ricci flow has demonstrated its great potential by solving various problems in many fields, which can be hardly handled by alternative methods so far.

This article considers the quasi-local conserved quantities with respect to a reference spacetime with a cosmological constant. We follow the approach developed by the authors in [25,26,7] and define the quasi-local energy as differences of surface Hamiltonians. The ground state for the gravitational energy is taken to be a reference configuration in the de Sitter (dS) or Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. This defines the quasi-local energy with respect to the reference spacetime and generalizes our previous definition with respect to the Minkowski spacetime. Through an optimal isometric embedding into the reference spacetime, the Killing fields of the reference spacetime are transplanted back to the surface in the physical spacetime to complete the definitions of quasi-local conserved quantities. We also compute how the corresponding total conserved quantities evolve under the Einstein equation with a cosmological constant.

In relativity, the energy of a moving particle depends on the observer, and the rest mass is the minimal energy seen among all observers. The Wang–Yau quasi-local mass for a surface in spacetime introduced in Wang and Yau (Phys Rev Lett 102(2):021101, 2009 ; Commun Math Phys 288(3):919–942, 2009) is defined by minimizing quasi-local energy associated with admissible isometric embeddings of the surface into the Minkowski space. A critical point of the quasi-local energy is an isometric embedding satisfying the Euler–Lagrange equation. In this article, we prove results regarding both local and global minimizing properties of critical points of the Wang–Yau quasi-local energy. In particular, under a condition on the mean curvature vector we show a critical point minimizes the quasi-local energy locally. The same condition also implies that the critical point is globally minimizing among all axially symmetric embedding provided the image of the associated isometric embedding lies in a totally geodesic Euclidean 3-space.