We give new examples of hyperbolic and relatively hyperbolic groups of cohomological dimension d for all d ≥ 4 (see Theorem 2.13). These examples result from applying CAT(0)/CAT(−1) filling constructions (based on singular doubly warped products) to finite volume hyperbolic manifolds with toral cusps. The groups obtained have a number of interesting properties, which are established by analyzing their boundaries at infinity by a kind of Morse-theoretic technique, related to but distinct from ordinary and combinatorial Morse theory (see Section 5).

In a previous paper we have constructed an invariant of fourdimensional manifolds with boundary in the form of an element in the stable homotopy group of the Seiberg-Witten Floer spectrum of the boundary. Here we prove that when one glues two four- manifolds along their boundaries, the Bauer-Furuta invariant of the resulting manifold is obtained by applying a natural pairing to the invariants of the pieces. As an application, we show that the connected sum of three copies of the K3 surface contains no exotic nuclei. In the process we also compute the Floer spectrum for several Seifert fibrations.

This paper extends our earlier results to higher dimensions using a different approach, based on the rigidity of complex structures on certain domains. We prove a “low energy” result in all dimensions, in the sense that if normalized energy in a large ball is small enough, then the normalized energy in any interior ball must also be small.

Let M be a compact Hamiltonian T−space, with finite fixed point set MT . An equivariant class is determined by its restriction to MT , and to each fixed point p ∈ MT and generic component of the moment map, there corresponds a canonical class τp. For a special class of Hamiltonian T−spaces, the value τp,q of τp at a fixed point q can be determined through an iterated interpolation procedure, and we obtained a formula for τp,q as a sum over ascending chains from p to q. In general the number of such chains is huge, and the main result of this paper is a procedure to reduce the number of relevant chains, through a systematic degeneration of the interpolation direction. The resulting formula for τp,q resembles, via the localization formula, an integral over a space of chains, and we prove that, for complex Grassmannians, τp,q can indeed be expressed as the integral of an equivariant form over a smooth Schubert variety.

We consider manifolds with conic singularities that are isometric to Rn outside a compact set. Under natural geometric assumptions on the cone points, we prove the existence of a logarithmic resonance-free region for the cut-off resolvent. The estimate also applies to the exterior domains of non-trapping polygons via a doubling process. The proof of the resolvent estimate relies on the propagation of singularities theorems of Melrose and the second author [23] to establish a “very weak” Huygens’ principle, which may be of independent interest. As applications of the estimate, we obtain a exponential local energy decay and a resonance wave expansion in odd dimensions, as well as a lossless local smoothing estimate for the Schr¨odinger equation.