An expansion is developed for the Weil-Petersson Riemann curvature tensor in the thin region of the Teichm¨uller and moduli spaces. The tensor is evaluated on the gradients of geodesiclengths for disjoint geodesics. A precise lower bound for sectional curvature in terms of the surface systole is presented. The curvature tensor expansion is applied to establish continuity properties at the frontier strata of the augmented Teichm¨uller space. The curvature tensor has the asymptotic product structure already observed for the metric and covariant derivative. The product structure is combined with the earlier negative sectional curvature results to establish a classification of asymptotic flats. Furthermore, tangent subspaces of more than half the dimension of Teichm¨uller space contain sections with a definite amount of negative curvature. Proofs combine estimates for uniformization group exponential-distance sums and potential theory bounds.

Let M⊂CN be a generic real-analytic submanifold of finite type, M′⊂CN′ be a real-analytic set, and p∈M, where we assume that N,N′⩾2. Let H:(CN,p)→CN′ be a formal holomorphic mapping sending M into M′, and let EM′ denote the set of points in M′ through which there passes a complex-analytic subvariety of positive dimension contained in M′. We show that, if H does not send M into EM′, then H must be convergent. As a consequence, we derive the convergence of all formal holomorphic mappings when M′ does not contain any complex-analytic subvariety of positive dimension, answering by this a long-standing open question in the field. More generally, we establish necessary conditions for the existence of divergent formal maps, even when the target real-analytic set is foliated by complex-analytic subvarieties, allowing us to settle additional convergence problems such as e.g. for transversal formal maps between Levi-non-degenerate hypersurfaces and for formal maps with range in the tube over the light cone.

We show that the dynamics of automorphisms on all projective complex manifolds X (of dimension 3, or of any dimension but assuming the Good Minimal Model Program or Mori’s Program) are canonically built up from the dynamics on just three types of projective complex manifolds: complex tori, weak Calabi-Yau manifolds and rationally connected manifolds. As a by-product, we confirm the conjecture of Guedj [20] for automorphisms on 3-dimensional projective manifolds, and also determine π1(X).

A two-dimensional periodic Schr\"{o}dingier operator is associated with every Lagrangian torus in the complex projective plane ${\mathbb C}P^2$. Using this operator we introduce an energy functional on the set of Lagrangian tori. It turns out this energy functional coincides with the Willmore functional $W^{-}$ introduced by Montiel and Urbano. We study the energy functional on a family of Hamiltonian-minimal Lagrangian tori and support the Montiel--Urbano conjecture that the minimum of the functional is achieved by the Clifford torus. We also study deformations of minimal Lagrangian tori and show that if a deformation preserves the conformal type of the torus, then it also preserves the area, i.e. preserves the value of the energy functional. In particular, the deformations generated by Novikov--Veselov equations preserve the area of minimal Lagrangian tori.

We solve the Plateau problem for marginally outer trapped surfaces in general Cauchy data sets. We employ the Perron method and tools from geometric measure theory to force and control a blow-up of Jang’s equation. Substantial new geometric insights regarding the lower order properties of marginally outer trapped surfaces are gained in the process. The techniques developed in this paper are flexible and can be adapted to other non-variational existence problems.