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.

A Schubert class  in the Grassmannian G(k, n) is rigid if the only proper subvarieties representing that class are Schubert varieties . We prove that a Schubert class  is rigid if and only if it is defined by a partition  satisfying a simple numerical criterion. If  fails this criterion, then there is a corresponding hyperplane class in another Grassmannian G(k0, n0) such that the deformations of the hyperplane in G(k0, n0) yield non-trivial deformations of the Schubert variety . We also prove that, if a partition  contains a sub-partition defining a rigid and singular Schubert class in another Grassmannian G(k0, n0), then there does not exist a smooth subvariety of G(k, n) representing .

In a previous paper, we described a natural closed subset, M 0 1,k(X,A; J), of the moduli space M1,k(X,A; J) of stable genusone J-holomorphic maps into a symplectic manifold X. In this paper we generalize the definition of the main component to moduli spaces of perturbed, in a restricted way, J-holomorphic maps and conclude that M 0 1,k(X,A; J), just like M1,k(X,A; J), carries a virtual fundamental class, which can be used to define symplectic invariants. These truly genus-one invariants constitute part of the standard genus-one Gromov-Witten invariants, which arise from the entire moduli space M1,k(X,A; J). The new invariants are more geometric and can be used to compute the genus-one GW-invariants of complete intersections, as shown in a separate paper.

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.

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.