We study minimizers of the functionalwhere $B_{1}^{{\mathchoice {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle +$}} {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle +$}} {\raise .1ex\hbox {$\scriptscriptstyle +$}} {\scriptscriptstyle +}}}=\{x\in B_{1}: x_{1}>0\}$ ,$u$=0 on {$x$∈$B$_{1}:$x$_{1}=0}, $\lambda^{{\mathchoice {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle \pm $}} {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle \pm $}} {\raise .1ex\hbox {$\scriptscriptstyle \pm $}} {\scriptscriptstyle \pm }}}$ are two positive constants and 0<$p$<1. In two dimensions, we prove that the free boundary is a uniform$C$^{1}graph up to the flat part of the fixed boundary and also that two-phase points cannot occur on this part of the fixed boundary. Here, the free boundary refers to the union of the boundaries of the sets {$x$:±$u$($x$)>0}.

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We obtain an estimate for the volumes of neighborhoods of sets of large curvature in three-dimensional K¨ahler-Einstein manifolds. The key technical step is to prove that a version of monotonicity for L2 energy holds as long as the underlying region does not “carry homology” (in the sense that the normalized energy in a ball controls the normalized energy in an interior ball).

An inequality relating the Euler characteristic, the signature and the <i>L</i>₂-norm of the curvature of the bundle of densities is proved for a four-dimensional compact Einstein-Weyl manifold. This generalises the Hitchin-Thorpe inequality for Einstein manifolds. The case where equality occurs is discussed and related to Hitchin's classification of Ricci-flat self-dual four-manifolds and to the recent work of Gauduchon on closed non-exact Einstein-Weyl geometries.

In this note, we study submanifold geometry of the Atiyah--Hitchin manifold, a double cover of the 2-monopole moduli space, which plays an important role in various settings such as the supersymmetric background of string theory. When the manifold is naturally identified as the total space of a line bundle over S^2, the zero section is a distinguished minimal 2-sphere of considerable interest. In particular, there has been a conjecture about the uniqueness of this minimal 2-sphere among all closed minimal 2-surfaces. We show that this minimal 2-sphere satisfies the ``strong stability condition" proposed in our earlier work, and confirm the global uniqueness as a corollary.