Luttinger surgery is used to produce minimal symplectic 4- manifolds with small Euler characteristics. We construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP2#3CP 2 , and which contains a genus two symplectic surface with trivial normal bundle and simply-connected complement. We also construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold which is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to 3CP2#5CP 2 , and which contains two disjoint essential Lagrangian tori such that the complement of the union of the tori is simply-connected. These examples are used to construct minimal symplectic manifolds with Euler characteristic 6 and fundamental group Z, Z3, or Z/p ⊕ Z/q ⊕ Z/r for integers p, q, r. Given a group G presented with g generators and r relations, a symplectic 4-manifold with fundamental group G and Euler characteristic 10 + 6(g + r) is constructed.

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In the ¯rst Heisenberg group H1 with its sub-Riemannian structure generated by the horizontal subbundle, we single out a class of C2 non-characteristic entire intrinsic graphs which we call strict graphical strips. We prove that such strict graphical strips have vanishing horizontal mean curvature (i.e., they are H-minimal) and are unstable (i.e., there exist compactly supported deformations for which the second variation of the horizontal perimeter is strictly negative). We then show that, modulo left-translations and rotations about the center of the group, every C2 entire Hminimal graph with empty characteristic locus and which is not a vertical plane contains a strict graphical strip. Combining these results we prove the conjecture that in H1 the only stable C2 Hminimal entire graphs, with empty characteristic locus, are thevertical planes.

It is classically known that complete flat (that is, zero Gaussian curvature) surfaces in Euclidean 3-space R3 are cylinders over space curves. This implies that the study of global behaviour of flat surfaces requires the study of singular points as well. If a flat surface f admits singularities but its Gauss map  is globally defined on the surface and can be smoothly extended across the singular set, f is called a frontal. In addition, if the pair (f, ) defines an immersion into R3×S2, f is called a front. A front f is called flat if the Gauss map degenerates everywhere. The parallel surfaces and the caustic (i.e. focal surface) of a flat front f are also flat fronts. In this paper, we generalize the classical notion of completeness to flat fronts, and give a representation formula for a flat front which has a non-empty compact singular set and whose ends are all immersed and complete. As an application, we show that such a flat front has properly embedded ends if and only if its Gauss map image is a convex curve. Moreover, we show the existence of at least four singular points other than cuspidal edges on such a flat front with embedded ends, which is a variant of the classical four vertex theorem for convex plane curves.

We consider minimal surfaces M which are complete, embedded, and have finite total curvature in R3, and bounded, entire solutions with finite Morse index of the Allen-Cahn equation
u+ f(u) = 0 in R3. Here f = −W0 with W bi-stable and balanced, for instance W(u) = 1 4 (1 − u2)2. We assume that M has m  2 ends, and additionally that M is non-degenerate, in the sense that its bounded Jacobi fields are all originated from rigid motions (this is known for instance for a Catenoid and for the Costa-Hoffman- Meeks surface of any genus). We prove that for any small  > 0, the Allen-Cahn equation has a family of bounded solutions depending on m − 1 parameters distinct from rigid motions, whose level sets are embedded surfaces lying close to the blown-up surface M := −1M, with ends possibly diverging logarithmically from M. We prove that these solutions are L1-non-degenerate up to rigid motions, and find that their Morse index coincides with the index of the minimal surface. Our construction suggests parallels of De Giorgi conjecture for general bounded solutions of finite Morse index.