In this paper we obtain a stability theorem of generalized K¨ahler structures with one pure spinor under small deformations of generalized complex structures. (This is analogous to the stability theorem of K¨ahler manifolds by Kodaira-Spencer.) We apply the stability theorem to a class of compact K¨ahler manifolds which admits deformations to generalized complex manifolds and obtain non-trivial generalized K¨ahler structures on Fano surfaces and toric K¨ahler manifolds. In particular, we show that every nonzero holomorphic Poisson structure on a K¨ahler manifold induces deformations of non-trivial generalized K¨ahler structures.

Recently Freed and Hopkins [11] proved that there is no parity anomaly in M-theory on pin+ manifolds in the low-energy field theory approximation, and they also developed an algebraic theory of cubic forms. Earlier Witten [33] proved the anomaly cancellation for spin manifolds by introducing the E8-bundle technique. Motivated by the cubic forms and the anomaly cancellation formulas of Witten-Freed-Hopkins, we give some new cubic forms on spin, spinc, spinω2 and orientable 12- manifolds respectively. We relate them to η-invariants when the manifolds are with boundary, and mod 2 indices on 10 dimensional characteristic submanifolds when the manifolds are spinc or spinω2 . Our method of producing these cubic forms is a combination of (generalized) Witten classes and the character of the basic representation of affine E8.

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Compactifications of symmetric spaces have been constructed by different methods for various applications. One application is to provide the so-called rational boundary components which can be used to compactify locally symmetric spaces. In this paper, we construct many compactifications of symmetric spaces using a uniform method, which is motivated by the Borel-Serre compact- ification of locally symmetric spaces. Besides unifying compactifications of both symmetric and locally symmetric spaces, this uniform construction allows one to compare and relate easily different compactifications, to extend the group action continuously to boundaries of compactifications, and to clarify the structure of the boundaries.

Motivated by the recent work of Wu and Yau on the ampleness of canonical line bundle for compact K\"ahler manifolds with negative holomorphic sectional curvature, we introduce a new curvature notion called {\em real bisectional curvature} for Hermitian manifolds. When the metric is K\"ahler, this is just the holomorphic sectional curvature $H$, and when the metric is non-K\"ahler, it is slightly stronger than $H$. We classify compact Hermitian manifolds with constant non-zero real bisectional curvature, and also slightly extend Wu-Yau's theorem to the Hermitian case. The underlying reason for the extension is that the Schwarz lemma of Wu-Yau works the same when the target metric is only Hermitian but has nonpositive real bisectional curvature.