In this paper we obtain a stability theorem of generalized K¨ahler structures with one pure spinor under small deformations of generalized complex structures. (This is analogous to the stability theorem of K¨ahler manifolds by Kodaira-Spencer.) We apply the stability theorem to a class of compact K¨ahler manifolds which admits deformations to generalized complex manifolds and obtain non-trivial generalized K¨ahler structures on Fano surfaces and toric K¨ahler manifolds. In particular, we show that every nonzero holomorphic Poisson structure on a K¨ahler manifold induces deformations of non-trivial generalized K¨ahler structures.

Hence the energy defines a functional on the space of Lipshitz maps between M and M'. Critical points of this functional are called harmonic maps. These maps were studied by Bochner, Morrey, Rauch, Eells and Sampson, Hartman, Uhlenbeck, Hamilton, Hildebrandt and others. The first fundamental result was due to Eells and Sampson [3] who proved that, in case M'has non-positive sectional curvature, each map from M to M'is homotopic to a harmonic map.(This result was then extended by Hamilton [8] to the case where both M and M'are allowed to have boundary.) Later Hartman [7] was able to prove the harmonic map is unique in each homotopy class if M'has strictly negative curvature. This last result of Hartman leads one to believe that harmonic maps between compact manifolds with negative curvature must enjoy a lot of nice properties. In fact, a few years ago, B. Lawson and the second author conjectured

We introduce the notion of Bonnet-Myers and Lichnerowicz sharpness in the Ollivier Ricci curvature sense. Our main result is a classification of all self-centered Bonnet-Myers sharp graphs (hypercubes, cocktail party graphs, even-dimensional demi-cubes, Johnson graphs , the Gosset graph J(2n, n) and suitable Cartesian products). We also present a purely combinatorial reformulation of this result. We show that Bonnet-Myers sharpness implies Lichnerowicz sharpness and classify all distance-regular Lichnerowicz sharp graphs under the additional condition θ_1=b_1-1. We also relate Bonnet-Myers sharpness to an upper bound of Bakry-Émery ∞-curvature, which motivates a general conjecture about Bakry-Émery ∞-curvature.

We investigate the minimal and isoperimetric surface problems in a large class of sub-Riemannian manifolds, the so-called Vertically Rigid spaces. We construct an adapted connection for such spaces and, using the variational tools of Bryant, Griffiths and Grossman, derive succinct forms of the Euler-Lagrange equations for critical points for the associated variational problems. Using the Euler-Lagrange equations, we show that minimal and isoperimetric surfaces satisfy a constant horizontal mean curvature conditions away from characteristic points. Moreover, we use the formalism to construct a horizontal second fundamental form, II0, for vertically rigid spaces and, as a first application, use II0 to show that minimal surfaces cannot have points of horizontal positive curvature and that minimal surfaces in Carnot groups cannot be locally strictly horizontally geometrically convex. We note that the convexity condition is distinct from others currently in the literature.

In this paper, we prove that if a compact Kähler manifold X has a smooth Hermitian metric ω such that (T_X,ω) is uniformly RC-positive, then X is projective and rationally connected. Conversely, we show that, if a projective manifold X is rationally connected, then there exists a uniformly RC-positive complex Finsler metric on T_X .