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.

A cohomology theory associated to a holomorphic Poisson structure is the hypercohomology of a bicomplex where one of the two operators is the classical -operator, while the other operator is the adjoint action of the Poisson bivector with respect to the Schouten-Nijenhuis bracket. The first page of the associated spectral sequence is the Dolbeault cohomology with coefficients in the sheaf of germs of holomorphic polyvector fields. In this note, the authors investigate the conditions for which this spectral sequence degenerates on the first page when the underlying complex manifolds are nilmanifolds with an abelian complex structure. For a particular class of holomorphic Poisson structures, this result leads to a Hodge-type decomposition of the holomorphic Poisson cohomology. We provide examples when the nilmanifolds are 2-step.

We give a proof of the Hard Lefschetz Theorem for orbifolds that does not involve intersection homology. We use a foliated version of the Hard Lefschetz Theorem due to El Kacimi.

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Motivated by new explicit positive Ricci curvature metrics on the four-sphere which are also Einstein-Weyl, we show that the dimension of the Einstein-Weyl moduli near certain Einstein metrics is bounded by the rank of the isometry group and that any Weyl manifold can be embedded as a hypersurface with prescribed second fundamental form in some Einstein-Weyl space. Closed four-dimensional Einstein-Weyl manifolds are proved to be absolute minima of the L²-norm of the curvature of Weyl manifolds and a local version of the Lafontaine inequality is obtained. The above metrics on the four-sphere are shown to contain minimal hypersurfaces isometric to S¹S² whose second fundamental form has constant length.