Quasilocal mass in general relativity is a notion defined for a closed space like 2-surface in spacetime. In this note, we explain the definition in [23] and [24] from a mathematical viewpoint, emphasizing the connection to differential geometry and nonlinear partial differential equations. We also discuss a minimax interpretation of the definition and compare with other notions of quasilocal mass.

In this note, we discuss the mean curvature flow of graphs of maps between Riemannian manifolds. Special emphasis will be placed on estimates of the flow as a non-linear parabolic system of differential equations. Several global existence theorems and applications to isotopy problems in geometry and topology will be presented. The results are based on joint works of the author with his collaborators I. Medo\v{s}, K. Smoczyk, and M.-P. Tsui.

This note discusses the recent work of Huang-Schoen-Wang [13] on specifying total conserved quantities of a vacuum initial data set.

We discuss the concepts of energy and mass in relativity. On a finitely extended spatial region, they lead to the notion of quasilocal energy/mass for the boundary 2-surface in spacetime. A new definition was found in [27] that satisfies the positivity, rigidity, and asymptotics properties. The definition makes use of the surface Hamiltonian term which arises from Hamilton-Jacobi analysis of the gravitation action. The reference surface Hamiltonian is associated with an isometric embedding of the 2-surface into the Minkowski space. We discuss this new definition of mass as well as the reference surface Hamiltonian. Most of the discussion is based on joint work with PoNing Chen and Shing-Tung Yau.

We prove a sharp inequality for hypersurfaces in the ndimensional Anti-deSitter-Schwarzschild manifold for general $n \ge  3$. This inequality generalizes the classical Minkowski inequality [19] for surfaces in the three dimensional Euclidean space. The proof relies on a new monotonicity formula for inverse mean curvature flow, and uses a geometric inequality established in [4].