We prove the nonexistence of stable immersed minimal surfaces uniformly conformally equivalent to $ \mathbb{C}$ in any complete orientable four-dimensional Riemannian manifold with uniformly positive isotropic curvature. We also generalize the same nonexistence result to higher dimensions provided that the ambient manifold has uniformly positive complex sectional curvature. The proof consists of two parts: assuming an ``eigenvalue condition'' on the $ \overline {\partial }$-operator of a holomorphic bundle, we prove (1) a vanishing theorem for these holomorphic bundles on $ \mathbb{C}$ and (2) an existence theorem for holomorphic sections with controlled growth by Hörmander's weighted $L^2$-method.

Unit tangent bundle of a surface carries various information of tangent vector fields on that surface. For 2-spheres (ie genus-zero closed surfaces), the unit tangent bundle is a closed 3-manifold that has non-trivial topology and cannot be embedded in R3. Therefore it cannot be constructed by existing mesh generation algorithms directly. This work aims at the first discrete construction of unit tangent bundles over 2-spheres using tetrahedral meshes. We propose a two-stage algorithm for the construction, which starts from constructing two local bundles and then combines them into a global bundle.

In this paper we study the geometry of manifolds with vector cross products and its complexification. First we develop the theory of instantons and branes and study their deformations. For example they are (i) holomorphic curves and Lagrangian submanifolds in symplectic manifolds and (ii) associative submanifolds and coassociative submanifolds in G2-manifolds. Second we classify K¨ahler manifolds with the complex analog of the vector cross product, namely they are Calabi-Yau manifolds and hyperk¨ahler manifolds. Furthermore we study instantons, Neumann branes and Dirichlet branes on these manifolds. For example they are special Lagrangian submanifolds with phase angle zero, complex hypersurfaces and special Lagrangian submanifolds with phase angle pi/2 in Calabi-Yau manifolds.

We construct examples of shrinkers and expanders for Lagrangian mean curvature flows. These examples are Hamiltonian stationary and asymptotic to the union of two Hamiltonian stationary cones found by Schoen and Wolfson in [SWO]. The Schoen- Wolfson cones Cp,q are obstructions to the existence problems of special Lagrangians or Lagrangian minimal surfaces in the variational approach. It is known that these cone singularities cannot be resolved by any smooth oriented Lagrangian submanifolds. The shrinkers and expanders that we found can be glued together to yield solutions of the Brakke motion-a weak formulation of the mean curvature flow. For any coprime pair (p, q) with p > q > 1, we construct such a solution that resolves one single Schoen-Wolfson cone Cp,q. Note that Cp,q is stable only if p . q = 1. It thus provides an evidence to Schoen-Wolfson’s conjecture that the (2, 1) cone is the only area-minimizing cone. Higher dimensional generalizations are also obtained.

We derive a gradient estimate for positive functions, in particular for positive solutions to the heat equation, on finite or locally finite graphs. Unlike the well known Li-Yau estimate, which is based on the maximum principle, our estimate follows from the graph structure of the gradient form and the Laplacian operator. Though our assumption on graphs is slightly stronger than that of Bauer et al. (J Differ Geom 99:359–405, 2015), our estimate can be easily applied to nonlinear differential equations, as well as differential inequalities. As applications, we estimate the greatest lower bound of Cheng’s eigenvalue and an upper bound of the minimal heat kernel, which is recently studied by Bauer et al. (Preprint, 2015) by the Li-Yau estimate. Moreover, generalizing an earlier result of Lin and Yau (Math Res Lett 17:343–356, 2010), we derive a lower bound of nonzero eigenvalues by our gradient estimate.