We study the isoperimetric structure of asymptotically flat Riemannian 3-manifolds (M, g) that are C0-asymptotic to Schwarzschild of mass m > 0. Refining an argument due to H. Bray, we obtain an effective volume comparison theorem in Schwarzschild. We use it to show that isoperimetric regions exist in (M, g) for all sufficiently large volumes, and that they are close to centered coordinate spheres. This implies that the volume-preserving stable constant mean curvature spheres constructed by G. Huisken and S.-T. Yau as well as R. Ye as perturbations of large centered coordinate spheres minimize area among all competing surfaces that enclose the same volume. This confirms a conjecture of H. Bray. Our results are consistent with the uniqueness results for volumepreserving stable constant mean curvature surfaces in initial data sets obtained by G. Huisken and S.-T. Yau and strengthened by J. Qing and G. Tian. The additional hypotheses that the surfaces be spherical and far out in the asymptotic region in their results are not necessary in our work.

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We study the space of Killing fields on the four dimensional AdS spacetime AdS 3,1 . Two subsets S and O are identified: S (the spinor Killing fields) is constructed from imaginary Killing spinors, and O (the observer Killing fields) consists of all hypersurface orthogonal, future timelike unit Killing fields. When the cosmology constant vanishes, or in the Minkowski spacetime case, these two subsets have the same convex hull in the space of Killing fields. In presence of the cosmology constant, the convex hull of O is properly contained in that of S . This leads to two different notions of energy for an asymptotically AdS spacetime, the spinor energy and the observer energy. In [10], Chru\'sciel, Maerten and Tod proved the positivity of the spinor energy and derived important consequences among the related conserved quantities. We show that the positivity of the observer energy follows from the positivity of the spinor energy. A new notion called the "rest mass" of an asymptotically AdS spacetime is then defined by minimizing the observer energy, and is shown to be evaluated in terms of the adjoint representation of the Lie algebra of Killing fields. It is proved that the rest mass has the desirable rigidity property that characterizes the AdS spacetime.

We show the existence of complete, asymptotically flat Cauchy initial data for the vacuum Einstein field equations, free of trapped surfaces, whose future development must admit a trapped surface. Moreover, the datum is exactly a constant time slice in Minkowski space-time inside and exactly a constant time slice in Kerr space-time outside. The proof makes use of the full strength of Christodoulou’s work on the dynamical formation of black holes and Corvino-Schoen’s work on the construction of initial data sets.

We investigate the Chern–Ricci flow, an evolution equation of Hermitian metrics generalizing the Kähler–Ricci flow, on elliptic bundles over a Riemann surface of genus greater than one. We show that, starting at any Gauduchon metric, the flow collapses the elliptic fibers and the metrics converge to the pullback of a Kähler–Einstein metric from the base. Some of our estimates are new even for the Kähler–Ricci flow. A consequence of our result is that, on every minimal non-Kähler surface of Kodaira dimension one, the Chern–Ricci flow converges in the sense of Gromov–Hausdorff to an orbifold Kähler–Einstein metric on a Riemann surface.