We prove that the second positive Neumann eigenvalue of a bounded simply-connected planar domain of a given area does not exceed the first positive Neumann eigenvalue on a disk of half this area. The estimate is sharp and attained by a sequence of domains degenerating to a union of two identical disks. In particular, this result implies the P´olya conjecture for the second Neumann eigenvalue. The proof is based on a combination of analytic and topological arguments. As a by-product of our method we obtain an upper bound on the second eigenvalue for conformally round metrics on odd-dimensional spheres.

In this paper we study compact Sasaki manifolds in view of transverse K¨ahler geometry and extend some results in K¨ahler geometry to Sasaki manifolds. In particular we define integral invariants which obstruct the existence of transverse K¨ahler metric with harmonic Chern forms. The integral invariant f1 for the first Chern class case becomes an obstruction to the existence of transverse K¨ahler metric of constant scalar curvature. We prove the existence of transverse K¨ahler-Ricci solitons (or Sasaki-Ricci soliton) on compact toric Sasaki manifolds whose basic first Chern form of the normal bundle of the Reeb foliation is positive and the first Chern class of the contact bundle is trivial. We will further show that if S is a compact toric Sasaki manifold with the above assumption then by deforming the Reeb field we get a Sasaki-Einstein structure on S. As an application we obtain Sasaki-Einstein metrics on the U(1)-bundles associated with the canonical line bundles of toric Fano manifolds, including as a special case an irregular toric Sasaki-Einstein metrics on the unit circle bundle associated with the canonical bundle of the two-point blow-up of the complex projective plane.

We solve the Plateau problem for marginally outer trapped surfaces in general Cauchy data sets. We employ the Perron method and tools from geometric measure theory to force and control a blow-up of Jang’s equation. Substantial new geometric insights regarding the lower order properties of marginally outer trapped surfaces are gained in the process. The techniques developed in this paper are flexible and can be adapted to other non-variational existence problems.

We show that the logarithmic derivatives of the convolution heat kernels on a uni-modular Lie group are exponentially integrable. This result is then used to prove an “integrated” Harnack inequality for these heat kernels. It is shown that this integrated Harnack inequality is equivalent to a version of Wang’s Harnack inequality. (A key feature of all of these inequalities is that they are dimension independent.) Finally, we show these inequalities imply quasi-invariance properties of heat kernel measures for two classes of infinite dimensional “Lie” groups.

We carry out the programme of R. Liouville [19] to construct an explicit local obstruction to the existence of a Levi–Civita connection within a given projective structure [..] on a surface. The obstruction is of order 5 in the components of a connection in a projective class. It can be expressed as a point invariant for a second order ODE whose integral curves are the geodesics of [..] or as a weighted scalar projective invariant of the projective class. If the obstruction vanishes we find the sufficient conditions for the existence of a metric in the real analytic case. In the generic case they are expressed by the vanishing of two invariants of order 6 in the connection. In degenerate cases the sufficient obstruction is of order at most 8.