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.

It is proved that if a compact manifold admits a smooth action by a compact, connected, non-abelian Lie group, then it admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. This result is used to prove that if ^<i>n</i> is an exotic<i>n</i>-sphere which does not bound a spin manifold, then the only possible compact connected transformation groups of ^<i>n</i> are tori of dimension [(<i>n</i>+1)/2].

Let (X, g) be a compact Riemannian manifold with quasi-positive Riemannian scalar curvature. If there exists a complex structure J compatible with g, then the Kodaira dimension of (X, J) is equal to −∞ and the canonical bundle KX is not pseudo-effective. We also introduce the complex Yamabe number λc(X) for compact complex manifold X, and show that if λ_c(X) is greater than 0, then κ(X) is equal to −∞; moreover, if X is also spin, then the Hirzebruch A-hat genus \hat{A}(X) is zero.

We define a hierarchy of Hamiltonian PDEs associated to an arbitrary tau-function in the semi-simple orbit of the Givental group action on genus expansions of Frobenius manifolds. We prove that the equations, the Hamiltonians, and the bracket are weightedhomogeneous polynomials in the derivatives of the dependent variables with respect to the space variable. In the particular case of a conformal (homogeneous) Frobenius structure, our hierarchy coincides with the Dubrovin–Zhang hierarchy that is canonically associated to the underlying Frobenius structure. Therefore, our approach allows to prove the polynomiality of the equations, Hamiltonians, and one of the Poisson brackets of these hierarchies, as conjectured by Dubrovin and Zhang.

We study adiabatic limits of Ricci-flat K¨ahler metrics on a Calabi-Yau manifold which is the total space of a holomorphic fibration when the volume of the fibers goes to zero. By establishing some new a priori estimates for the relevant complex Monge-Amp`ere equation, we show that the Ricci-flat metrics collapse (away from the singular fibers) to a metric on the base of the fibration. This metric has Ricci curvature equal to a WeilPetersson metric that measures the variation of complex structure of the Calabi-Yau fibers. This generalizes results of Gross-Wilson for K3 surfaces to higher dimensions.