IN 1970 Lawson [22] proved that two embedded closed diffeomorphic minimal surfaces in the unit three-dimensional sphere S3 in lRJ are ambiently isotopic in S3. Lawson proved this theorem by first proving that an embedded orientable closed minimal surface of genus y in a closed orientable Riemannian three-manifold Mwith positive Ricci curvature disconnects M-into two genus-8 handlebodics. A result of Frankel [7] was used to prove this. Lawson then applied a deep result of Waldhauscn [33] that states that decompositions of SJ into two genus-cl handlebodies arc unique up to ambient isotopy. More prcciscly. Waldhauscns uniqucncss thcorcm states that whenever a closed surface of genus y in S separates SJ into handlcbodics, then the embedding of the surface is as simple as possible; in other words, the surface is obtained from a two-sphere Sz c Sby adding handles in an unknotted manner.

In the general, this article addresses the nature of, and relation between, canonical and log-canonical singularities of foliations by curves. The case of equivariance under a finite group action has several peculiarities, amongst which are examples from dimension 3 onward where no birational modification can be both Gorenstein and log-canonical. The article in the specific, i.e. a functorial resolution algorithm for foliated 3-folds in the 2-category of Deligne-Mumford champs, is thus not only optimal but natural.

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 give simple conditions on an ambient manifold that are necessary and sufficient for isoperimetric inequalities to hold.

In this paper, we extend the sharp lower bounds of spectal gap, due to Chen- Wang [12, 13], Bakry-Qian [6] and Andrews-Clutterbuck [5], from smooth Riemannian manifolds to general metric measure spaces with Riemannian curvature-dimension condition RCD(K;N).