In this paper, we prove a general existence theorem for properly embedded minimal surfaces with free boundary in any compact Riemannian 3‐manifold M with boundary ∂M. These minimal surfaces are either disjoint from ∂M or meet ∂M orthogonally. The main feature of our result is that there is no assumptions on the curvature of M or convexity of ∂M. We prove the boundary regularity of the minimal surfaces at their free boundaries. Furthermore, we define a topological invariant, the filling genus, for compact 3‐manifolds with boundary and show that we can bound the genus of the minimal surface constructed above in terms of the filling genus of the ambient manifold M. Our proof employs a variant of the min‐max construction used by Colding and De Lellis on closed embedded minimal surfaces, which were first developed by Almgren and Pitts.

We study Thurston’s Lipschitz and curve metrics, as well as the arc metric on the Teichmüller space of one-hold tori equipped with complete hyperbolic metrics with boundary holonomy of fixed length. We construct natural Lipschitz maps between two surfaces equipped with such hyperbolic metrics that generalize Thurston’s stretch maps and prove the following: (1) On the Teichmüller space of the torus with one boundary component, the Lipschitz and the curve metrics coincide and define a geodesic metric on this space. (2) On the same space, the arc and the curve metrics coincide when the length of the boundary component is ≤4arcsinh(1), but differ when the boundary length is large. We further apply our stretch map generalization to construct novel Thurston geodesics on the Teichmüller spaces of closed hyperbolic surfaces, and use these geodesics to show that the sum-symmetrization of the Thurston metric fails to exhibit Gromov hyperbolicity.

Using Seiberg-Witten Floer spectrum and Pin(2)-equivariant KO-theory, we prove new Furuta-type inequalities on the intersection forms of spin cobordisms between homology 3-spheres. As an application, we give explicit constrains on the intersection forms of spin 4-manifolds bounded by Brieskorn spheres ±Σ(2,3,6k±1). Along the way, we also give an alternative proof of Furuta-Kametanni's improvement of 10/8-theorem for closed spin-4 manifolds.

The general volume of a star body, a notion that includes the usual volume, the $q$th dual volumes, and many previous types of dual mixed volumes, is introduced. A corresponding new general dual Orlicz curvature measure is defined that specializes to the $(p,q)$-dual curvature measures introduced recently by Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang. General variational formulas are established for the general volume of two types of Orlicz linear combinations. One of these is applied to the Minkowski problem for the new general dual Orlicz curvature measure, giving in particular a solution to the Minkowski problem posed by Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang for the $(p,q)$-dual curvature measures when $p>0$ and $q<0$. A dual Orlicz-Brunn-Minkowski inequality for general volumes is obtained, as well as dual Orlicz-Minkowski-type inequalities and uniqueness results for star bodies. Finally, a very general Minkowski-type inequality, involving two Orlicz functions, two convex bodies, and a star body, is proved, that includes as special cases several others in the literature, in particular one due to Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang for the $(p,q)$-mixed volume.

We exhibit the first examples of hyperbolic three-manifolds for which the Seiberg-Witten equations do not admit any irreducible solution. Our approach relies on hyperbolic geometry in an essential way; it combines an explicit upper bound for the first eigenvalue on coexact 1-forms λ_1^* on rational homology spheres which admit irreducible solutions together with a version of the Selberg trace formula relating the spectrum of the Laplacian on coexact 1-forms with the volume and complex length spectrum of a hyperbolic three-manifold. Using these relationships, we also provide precise numerical bounds on λ_1^* for several hyperbolic rational homology spheres.