On the manifoldM(M) of all Riemannian metrics on a compact manifold M, one can consider the natural L2-metric as described first by [11]. In this paper we consider variants of this metric, which in general are of higher order. We derive the geodesic equations; we show that they are well-posed under some conditions and induce a locally diffeomorphic geodesic exponential mapping. We give a condition when Ricci flow is a gradient flow for one of these metrics.

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Let T be the Teichm¨uller space of marked genus g, n punctured Riemann surfaces with its bordification T the augmented Teichm ¨uller space of marked Riemann surfaces with nodes, [Abi77,Ber74]. Provided with the WP metric, T is a complete CAT(0) metric space, [DW03,Wol03, Yam04]. An invariant of a marked hyperbolic structure is the length ℓ of the geodesic α in a free homotopy class. A basic feature of Teichm¨uller theory is the interplay of two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry, Weil-Petersson (WP) geometry and the behavior of geodesic-length functions. Our goal is to develop an understanding of the intrinsic local WP geometry through a study of the gradient and Hessian of geodesic-length functions. Considerations include expansions for the WP pairing of gradients, expansions for the Hessian and covariant derivative, comparability models for the WP metric, as well as the behavior of WP geodesics, including a description of the Alexandrov tangent cone at the augmentation. Approximations and applications for geodesics close to the augmentation are developed. An application for fixed points of group actions is described. Bounding configurations and functions on the hyperbolic plane is basic to our approach. Considerations include analyzing the orbit of a discrete group of isometries and bounding sums of the inverse square exponential-distance.

Given a compact Riemannian manifold $M$, we consider a warped product manifold $\bar M = I \times_h M$, where $I$ is an open interval in $\Bbb R$. For a positive function $\psi$ defined on $\bar M$, we generalize the arguments in \cite{GRW2015} and \cite{RW16}, to obtain the curvature estimates for Hessian equations $\sigma_k(\kappa)=\psi(V,\nu(V))$. We also obtain some existence results for the starshaped compact hypersurface $\Sigma$ satisfying the above equation with various assumptions.

We investigate mirror symmetry for toric Calabi-Yau manifolds from the perspective of the SYZ conjecture. Starting with a non-toric special Lagrangian torus fibration on a toric Calabi-Yau manifold $X$, we construct a complex manifold $\check{X}$ using T-duality modified by quantum corrections. These corrections are encoded by Fourier transforms of generating functions of certain open Gromov-Witten invariants. We conjecture that this complex manifold $\check{X}$, which belongs to the Hori-Iqbal-Vafa mirror family, is inherently written in canonical flat coordinates. In particular, we obtain an enumerative meaning for the (inverse) mirror maps, and this gives a geometric reason for why their Taylor series expansions in terms of the K\"ahler parameters of $X$ have integral coefficients. Applying the results in \cite{Chan10} and \cite{LLW10}, we compute the open Gromov-Witten invariants in terms of local BPS invariants and give evidences of our conjecture for several 3-dimensional examples including $K_{\proj^2}$ and $K_{\proj^1\times\proj^1}$.