Motivated by the Mario-Vafa formula of Hodge integrals and physicists' predictions on local Gromov-Witten invariants of toric Fano surfaces in a Calabi-Yau threefold, the third author conjectured a formula of certain Hodge integrals in terms of certain Chern-Simons invariants of the Hopf link. We prove this formula by virtual localization on moduli spaces of relative stable morphisms.

In this note we introduce a natural Finsler structure on convex surfaces, referred to as the quotient Finsler structure, which is dual in a sense to the inclusion of a convex surface in a normed space as a submanifold. It has an associated quotient girth, which is similar to the notion of girth defined by Sch¨affer. We prove the analogs of Sch¨affer’s dual girth conjecture (proved by ´ Alvarez-Paiva) and the Holmes–Thompson dual volumes theorem in the quotient setting. We then show that the quotient Finsler structure admits a natural extension to higher Grassmannians, and prove the corresponding theorems in the general case. We follow ´ Alvarez-Paiva’s approach to the problem, namely, we study the symplectic geometry of the associated co-ball bundles. For the higher Grassmannians, the theory of Hamiltonian actions is applied.

We show that in a closed 3-manifold with a generic metric of positive Ricci curvature, there are minimal surfaces of arbitrary large Morse index, which partially confirms a conjecture by Marques and Neves. We prove this by analyzing the lamination structure of the limit of minimal surfaces with bounded Morse index.

We give a complete proof of the Bers–Sullivan–Thurston density conjecture. In the light of the ending lamination theorem, it suffices to prove that any collection of possible ending invariants is realized by some algebraic limit of geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds. The ending invariants are either Riemann surfaces or filling laminations supporting Masur domain measured laminations and satisfying some mild additional conditions. With any set of ending invariants we associate a sequence of geometrically finite hyperbolic manifolds and prove that this sequence has a convergent subsequence. We derive the necessary compactness theorem combining the Rips machine with non-existence results for certain small actions on real trees of free products of surface groups and free groups. We prove then that the obtained algebraic limit has the desired conformal boundaries and the property that none of the filling laminations is realized by a pleated surface. In order to be able to apply the ending lamination theorem, we have to prove that this algebraic limit has the desired topological type and that these non-realized laminations are ending laminations. That this is the case is the main novel technical result of this paper. Loosely speaking, we show that a filling Masur domain lamination which is not realized is an ending lamination.

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