We derive local integral and sup- estimates for the curvature of stable marginally outer trapped surfaces in a sliced space-time. The estimates bound the shear of a marginally outer trapped surface in terms of the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature of a slice containing the surface. These estimates are well adapted to situations of physical interest, such as dynamical horizons.

1. Statement of results Let Mn be a compact manifold of dimension n endowed with a Riemannian metric. The spectrum of the Laplacian,, acting on functions form a discrete set of the form {0< 1 2 k}. In 1970, Joseph Hersch [5] gave a sharp upper bound for the first non-zero eigenvalue 1 for any Riemannian metric on the 2-sphere in terms of its volume alone. Similar estimates for 1 on any compact oriented surfaces were derived by Yang-Yau [7]. The second and the third authors [6] studied the nonorientable surfaces and pointed out the relationship of 1 and the conformal class of the surface. In fact, their estimates were applied to study the Willmore problem. Another application of these types of upper bounds was found by Choi-Schoen [3] in relation to the set of all minimal surfaces in a compact 3-manifold of positive Ricci curvature. The purpose of this paper is to prove a higher dimensional generalization of the above results. It was pointed out by Marcel Berger [1] that Herschs theorem fails in higher dimensional spheres. In view of the relationship between 1 and the conformal

We study the mean curvature evolution of smooth, closed, twoconvex hypersurfaces in Rn+1 for n ≥ 3.Within this framework we effect a reconciliation between the flow with surgeries—recently constructed by Huisken and Sinestrari in [HS3]—and the wellknown weak solution of the level-set flow: we prove that the two solutions agree in an appropriate limit of the surgery parameters and in a precise quantitative sense. Our proof relies on geometric estimates for certain Lp-norms of the mean curvature which are of independent interest even in the setting of classicalmean curvature flow. We additionally show how our construction can be used to pass these estimates to limits and produce regularity results for the weak solution.

We introduce a new geometric flow, called the chord shortening flow, which is the negative gradient flow for the length functional on the space of chords with end points lying on a fixed submanifold in Euclidean space. As an application, we give a simplified proof of a classical theorem of Lusternik and Schnirelmann (and a generalization by Riede and Hayashi) on the existence of multiple orthogonal geodesic chords. For a compact convex planar domain, we show that any convex chord not orthogonal to the boundary would shrink to a point in finite time under the flow.

Smooth valuations on manifolds are studied by establishing a link with the Rumin-de Rham complex of the co-sphere bundle. Several operations on differential forms induce operations on smooth valuations: signature operator, Rumin-Laplace operator, Euler-Verdier involution and derivation operator. As an application, Alesker’s Hard Lefschetz Theorem for even translation invariant valuations on a finite-dimensional Euclidean space is generalized to all translation invariant valuations. The proof uses K¨ahler identities, the Rumin-de Rham complex and spectral geometry.