In this article, we study the small sphere limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy defined in [18,19]. Given a point p in a spacetime N , we consider a canonical family of surfaces approaching p along its future null cone and evaluate the limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy. The evaluation relies on solving an "optimal embedding equation" whose solutions represent critical points of the quasi-local energy. For a spacetime with matter fields, the scenario is similar to that of the large sphere limit found in [7]. Namely, there is a natural solution which is a local minimum, and the limit of its quasi-local energy recovers the stress-energy tensor at p . For a vacuum spacetime, the quasi-local energy vanishes to higher order and the solution of the optimal embedding equation is more complicated. Nevertheless, we are able to show that there exists a solution which is a local minimum and that the limit of its quasi-local energy is related to the Bel-Robinson tensor. Together with earlier work [7], this completes the consistency verification of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy with all classical limits.

We introduce a new geometric flow, called the chord shortening flow, which is the negative gradient flow for the length functional on the space of chords with end points lying on a fixed submanifold in Euclidean space. As an application, we give a simplified proof of a classical theorem of Lusternik and Schnirelmann (and a generalization by Riede and Hayashi) on the existence of multiple orthogonal geodesic chords. For a compact convex planar domain, we show that any convex chord not orthogonal to the boundary would shrink to a point in finite time under the flow.

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.

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.

We show that Norbury’s McShane identity for nonorientable cusped hyperbolic surfaces N generalizes to quasifuchsian representations of π1(N) as well as pseudo-Anosov mapping Klein bottles with singular fibers given by N.