We introduce a natural generalization of marginally outer trapped surfaces, called immersed marginally outer trapped surfaces, and prove that three-dimensional asymptotically flat initial data sets either contain such surfaces or are diffeomorphic to R^3. We establish a generalization of the Penrose singularity theorem which shows that the presence of an immersed marginally outer trapped surface generically implies the null geodesic incompleteness of any spacetime that satisfies the null energy condition and which admits a non-compact Cauchy surface. Taken together,these results can be viewed as an initial data version of the Gannon-Lee singularity theorem. The first result is a non-timesymmetric version of a theorem ofMeeks-Simon-Yau which implies that every asymptotically flat Riemannian 3-manifold that is not diffeomorphic to R^3 contains an embedded stable minimal surface. We also obtain an initial data version of the spacetime principle of topological censorship. Under physically natural assumptions, a 3-dimensional asymptotically flat initial data set with marginally outer trapped boundary and no immersed marginally outer trapped surfaces in its interior is diffeomorphic to R^3 minus a finite number of open balls. An extension to higher dimensions is also discussed.

Let X be a compact connected strongly pseudoconvex CR manifold of real dimension 2n . 1 in CN. It has been an interesting question to find an intrinsic smoothness criteria for the complex Plateau problem. For n  3 and N = n+1, Yau found a necessary and sufficient condition for the interior regularity of the HarveyLawson solution to the complex Plateau problem by means of Kohn–Rossi cohomology groups on X in 1981. For n = 2 and N  n + 1, the problem has been open for over 30 years. In this paper we introduce a new CR invariant g(1,1)(X) of X. The vanishing of this invariant will give the interior regularity of the Harvey–Lawson solution up to normalization. In the case n = 2 and N = 3, the vanishing of this invariant is enough to give the interior regularity.

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.

The universal Teichmu¨ller space is an infinitely dimensional generalization of the classical Teichmu¨ller space of Riemann surfaces. It carries a natural Hilbert structure, on which one can define a natural Riemannian metric, the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we investigate the Weil-Petersson Riemannian curvature operator ˜ Q of the universal Teichmu¨ller space with the Hilbert structure, and prove the following: (i) ˜ Q is non-positive definite. (ii) ˜ Q is a bounded operator. (iii) ˜ Q is not compact; the set of the spectra of ˜ Q is not discrete. As an application, we show that neither the Quaternionic hyperbolic space nor the Cayley plane can be totally geodesically immersed in the universal Teichmu¨ller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric.

In \cite{rigidity}, Luo introduced a $\psi_{\lambda}$ edge invariant which turns out to be a coordinate of the Teichm\"uller space of a surface with boundary. And he proved that for $\lambda \geq 0$, the image of the Teichm\"uller space under $\psi_{\lambda}$ edge invariant coordinate is an open cell. In this paper we verify his conjecture that for $\lambda<0$, the image of the Teichm\"uller space is a bounded convex polytope.