The diameter of a disc filling a loop in the universal covering of a Riemannian manifold M may be measured extrinsically using the distance function on the ambient space or intrinsically using the induced length metric on the disc. Correspondingly, the diameter of a van Kampen diagram
filling a word that represents the identity in a finitely presented group 􀀀 can either be measured intrinsically in the 1–skeleton of
or extrinsically in the Cayley graph of 􀀀. We construct the first examples of closed manifolds M and finitely presented groups 􀀀 = π1M for which this choice — intrinsic versus extrinsic — gives rise to qualitatively different min–diameter filling functions.

We prove that the higher harmonic signature of an even dimensional oriented Riemannian foliation F of a compact Riemannian manifold M with coefficients in a leafwise U(p, q)-flat complex bundle is a leafwise homotopy invariant. We also prove the leafwise homotopy invariance of the twisted higher Betti classes. Consequences for the Novikov conjecture for foliations and for groups are investigated.

Let H be a semisimple algebraic group. We prove the semistable reduction theorem for μ–semistable principal H–bundles over a smooth projective variety X defined over the field C. When X is a smooth projective surface and H is simple, we construct the algebro–geometric Donaldson–Uhlenbeck compactification of the moduli space of μ–semistable principal H–bundles with fixed char- acteristic classes and describe its points. For large characteristic classes we show that the moduli space of μ–stable principal H–bundles is non–empty.

Let fn → f0 be a convergent sequence of rational maps, preserving critical relations, and f0 be geometrically finite with parabolic points. It is known that for some unlucky choices of sequences fn,the Julia sets J(fn) and their Hausdorff dimensions may fail to converge as n → ∞. Our main result here is to prove the convergence of J(fn) and H.dim J(fn) for generic sequences fn. The same conclusion was obtained earlier, with stronger hypotheses on the sequence fn, by Bodart-Zinsmeister and then by McMullen. We characterize those choices of fn by means of flows of appropriate polynomial vector fields (following Douady-Estrada-Sentenac). We first prove an independent result about the (s-dimensional) length of separatrices of such flows, and then use it to estimate tails of Poincar´e series. This, together with existing techniques,provides the desired control of conformal densities and Hausdorff dimensions. Our method may be applied to other problems relatedto parabolic perturbations.

A hyperbolic 3-manifold M which fibers over the circle admits a flow called the suspension flow. We show that such a flow can be isotoped to be uniformly quasigeodesic in the hyperbolic metric on M; i.e., the flow lines lifted to hyperbolic space are K-bilipschitz embeddings of R (K > 1 fixed).