We prove that if a connected Lie group action on a complete Riemannian manifold preserves the geodesics (considered as unparameterized curves), then the metric has constant positive sectional curvature, or the group acts by affine transformations.

We prove a formula which relates Euler characteristic of moduli spaces of stable pairs on local K3 surfaces to counting invariants of semistable sheaves on them. Our formula generalizes KawaiYoshioka’s formula for stable pairs with irreducible curve classes to arbitrary curve classes. We also propose a conjectural multiple cover formula of sheaf counting invariants which, combined with our main result, leads to an Euler characteristic version of KatzKlemm-Vafa conjecture for stable pairs.

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In 2004, Sormani and Wei introduced the covering spectrum: a geometric invariant that isolates part of the length spectrum of a Riemannian manifold. In their paper they observed that certain Sunada isospectral manifolds share the same covering spectrum, thus raising the question of whether the covering spectrum is a spectral invariant. In the present paper we describe a group theoretic condition under which Sunada’s method gives manifolds with identical covering spectra. When the group theoretic condition of our method is not met, we are able to construct Sunada isospectral manifolds with distinct covering spectra in dimension 3 and higher. Hence, the covering spectrum is not a spectral invariant. The main geometric ingredient of the proof has an interpretation as the minimum-marked-length-spectrum analogue of Colin de Verdi`ere’s classical result on constructing metrics where the first k eigenvalues of the Laplace spectrum have been prescribed.

We find sufficient conditions for principal toric bundles over compact K¨ahler manifolds to admit Calabi-Yau connections with torsion, as well as conditions to admit strong K¨ahler connections with torsion. With the aid of a topological classification, we construct such geometry on (k−1)(S2×S4)#k(S3×S3) for all k ≥ 1.