We show that any star-shaped convex hypersurface with constantWeingarten curvature in the deSitter-Schwarzschildmanifold is a sphere of symmetry.Moreover, we study an isoperimetric problem for bounded domains in the doubled Schwarzschild manifold. We prove the existence of an isoperimetric surface for any value of the enclosed volume, and we completely describe the isoperimetric surfaces for very large enclosed volume. This complements work in H. Bray’s thesis, where isoperimetric surfaces homologous to the horizon are studied.

We study the limit of quasilocal energy defined in [7] and [8] for a family of spacelike 2-surfaces approaching null infinity of an asymptotically flat spacetime. It is shown that Lorentzian symmetry is recovered and an energy-momentum 4-vector is obtained. In particular, the result is consistent with the Bondi–Sachs energy-momentum at a retarded time. The quasilocal mass in [7] and [8] is defined by minimizing quasilocal energy among admissible isometric embeddings and observers. The solvability of the Euler-Lagrange equation for this variational problem is also discussed in both the asymptotically flat and asymptotically null cases. Assuming analyticity, the equation can be solved and the solution is locally minimizing in all orders. In particular, this produces an optimal reference hypersurface in the Minkowski space for the spatial or null exterior region of an asymptotically flat spacetime.

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.

The mean curvature flow is the gradient flow of volume functionals on the space of submanifolds. We prove a fundamental regularity result of the mean curvature flow in this paper: a Lipschitz submanifold with small local Lipschitz norm becomes smooth instantly along the mean curvature flow. This generalizes the regularity theorem of Ecker and Huisken for Lipschitz hypersurfaces. In particular, any submanifold of the Euclidean space with a continuous induced metric can be smoothed out by the mean curvature flow. The smallness assumption is necessary in the higher codimension case in view of an example of Lawson and Osserman. The stationary phase of the mean curvature flow corresponds to minimal submanifolds. Our result thus generalizes Morrey’s classical theorem on the smoothness of $C_1$ minimal submanifolds.

Let T  (Y, ) be a transverse knot which is the binding of some open book, (T, ), for the ambient contact manifold (Y, ). In this paper, we show that the transverse invariant bT(T ) 2[HFK(−Y,K), defined in [LOSSz09], is nonvanishing for such transverse knots. This is true regardless of whether or not  is tight. We also prove a vanishing theorem for the invariants L and T. As a corollary, we show that if (T, ) is an open book with connected binding, then the complement of T has no Giroux torsion.