We study isometric Lie group actions on symmetric spaces admitting a section, i.e., a submanifold that meets all orbits orthogonally at every intersection point. We classify such actions on the compact symmetric spaces with simple isometry group and rank greater than one. In particular, we show that these actions are hyperpolar, i.e., the sections are flat.

Let X → B be a proper flat morphism between smooth quasiprojective varieties of relative dimension n, and L → X a line bundle which is ample on the fibers. We establish formulas for the first two terms in the Knudsen-Mumford expansion for det(πLk) in terms of Deligne pairings of L and the relative canonical bundle K. This generalizes the theorem of Deligne [1], which holds for families of relative dimension one. As a corollary, we show that when X is smooth, the line bundle η associated to X → B, which was introduced in Phong-Sturm [12], coincides with the CM bundle defined by Paul-Tian [10, 11]. In a second and third corollaries, we establish asymptotics for the K-energy along Bergman rays generalizing the formulas obtained in [11].

We obtain a growth estimate for the number of lattice points inside any Q-Gorenstein cone. Our proof uses the result of Futaki-Ono-Wang on Sasaki-Einstein metric for the toric Sasakian manifold associated to the cone, a Yau’s inequality, and the Kawasaki-Riemann-Roch formula for orbifolds.

In this article we study compact K¨ahler manifolds satisfying a certain nonnegativity condition on the bisectional curvature. Under this condition, we show that the scalar curvature is nonnegative and that the first Chern class is positive assuming local irreducibility. We also obtain a partial classification of possible de Rham decompositions of the universal cover under this condition.

In this article we define new flows on the Hitchin components for PGL(V). Special examples of these flows are associated to simple closed curves on the surface and give generalized twist flows. Other examples, so called eruption flows, are associated to pair of pants in S and capture new phenomena which are not present in the case when n=2. We determine a global coordinate system on the Hitchin component. Using the computation of the Goldman symplectic form on the Hitchin component, that is developed by two of the authors in a companion paper to this article (Sun and Zhang in The Goldman symplectic form on the PGL(V)-Hitchin component, 2017. arXiv:1709.03589), this gives a global Darboux coordinate system on the Hitchin component.