We construct a new family of high genus examples of free boundary minimal surfaces in the Euclidean unit 3-ball by desingularizing the intersection of a coaxial pair of a critical catenoid and an equatorial disk. The surfaces are constructed by singular perturbation methods and have three boundary components. They are the free boundary analogue of the Costa-Hoffman-Meeks surfaces and the surfaces constructed by Kapouleas by desingularizing coaxial catenoids and planes. It is plausible that the minimal surfaces we constructed here are the same as the ones obtained recently by Ketover using the min-max method.

In studying the "11/8-Conjecture" on the Geography Problem in 4-dimensional topology, Furuta proposed a question on the existence of Pin(2)-equivariant stable maps between certain representation spheres. In this paper, we present a complete solution to this problem by analyzing the Pin(2)-equivariant Mahowald invariants. As a geometric application of our result, we prove a "10/8+4"-Theorem. We prove our theorem by analyzing maps between certain finite spectra arising from BPin(2) and various Thom spectra associated with it. To analyze these maps, we use the technique of cell diagrams, known results on the stable homotopy groups of spheres, and the j-based Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence.

By studying the Seiberg-Witten equations on end-periodic manifolds, we give an obstruction on the existence of positive scalar curvature metric on compact 4-manifolds with the same homology as S1×S3. This obstruction is given in terms of the relation between the Frøyshov invariant of the generator of H3(X;Z) with the 4-dimensional Casson invariant λSW(X) defined by Mrowka-Ruberman-Saveliev. Along the way, we develop a framework that can be useful in further study of the Seiberg-Witten theory on general end-periodic manifolds.

Let $(X,\alpha)$ be a K\"ahler manifold of dimension $n$, and let $[\omega] \in H^{1,1}(X,\mathbb{R})$. We study the problem of specifying the Lagrangian phase of $\omega$ with respect to $\alpha$, which is described by the nonlinear elliptic equation \[ \sum_{i=1}^{n} \arctan(\la_i)= h(x) \] where $\la_i$ are the eigenvalues of $\omega$ with respect to $\alpha$. When $h(x)$ is a topological constant, this equation corresponds to the deformed Hermitian-Yang-Mills (dHYM) equation, and is related by Mirror Symmetry to the existence of special Lagrangian submanifolds of the mirror. We introduce a notion of subsolution for this equation, and prove a priori $C^{2,\beta}$ estimates when $|h|>(n-2)\frac{\pi}{2}$ and a subsolution exists. Using the method of continuity we show that the dHYM equation admits a smooth solution in the supercritical phase case, whenever a subsolution exists. Finally, we discover some stability-type cohomological obstructions to the existence of solutions to the dHYM equation and we conjecture that when these obstructions vanish the dHYM equation admits a solution. We confirm this conjecture for complex surfaces.

In this paper, the first in a series, we study the deformed Hermitian-Yang-Mills (dHYM) equation from the variational point of view as an infinite dimensional GIT problem. The dHYM equation is mirror to the special Lagrangian equation, and our infinite dimensional GIT problem is mirror to Thomas' GIT picture for special Lagrangians. This gives rise to infinite dimensional manifold $\mathcal{H}$ closely related to Solomon's space of positive Lagrangians. In the hypercritical phase case we prove the existence of smooth approximate geodesics, and weak geodesics with $C^{1,\alpha}$ regularity. This is accomplished by proving sharp with respect to scale estimates for the Lagrangian phase operator on collapsing manifolds with boundary. As an application of our techniques we give a simplified proof of Chen's theorem on the existence of $C^{1,\alpha}$ geodesics in the space of K\"ahler metrics. In two follow up papers, these results will be used to examine algebraic obstructions to the existence of solutions to dHYM and special Lagrangians in Landau-Ginzburg models.