In this paper, we prove uniform curvature estimates for immersed stable free boundary minimal hypersurfaces satisfying a uniform area bound, which generalize the celebrated Schoen–Simon–Yau interior curvature estimates up to the free boundary. Our curvature estimates imply a smooth compactness theorem which is an essential ingredient in the min-max theory of free boundary minimal hypersurfaces developed by the last two authors. We also prove a monotonicity formula for free boundary minimal submanifolds in Riemannian manifolds for any dimension and codimension. For 3-manifolds with boundary, we prove a stronger curvature estimate for properly embedded stable free boundary minimal surfaces without a-priori area bound. This generalizes Schoen’s interior curvature estimates to the free boundary setting. Our proof uses the theory of minimal laminations developed by Colding and Minicozzi.

For smooth compact oriented Riemannian manifolds$M$of dimension 4$k$+2,$k$≥0, with or without boundary, and a vector bundle$F$on$M$with an inner product and a flat connection, we construct a modification of the Hodge star operator on the middle-dimensional (parabolic) cohomology of$M$twisted by$F$. This operator induces a canonical complex structure on the middle-dimensional cohomology space that is compatible with the natural symplectic form given by integrating the wedge product. In particular, when$k$=0 we get a canonical almost complex structure on the non-singular part of the moduli space of flat connections on a Riemann surface, with monodromies along boundary components belonging to fixed conjugacy classes when the surface has boundary, that is compatible with the standard symplectic form on the moduli space.

Here we classify$J$-embeddable surfaces, i.e. surfaces whose secant varieties have dimension at most 4, when the surfaces have two components at most.

In this paper, we solve a Monge-Ampre-type equation by the continuity method. This equation is motivated by the superstring theory.

We establish a boundary maximum principle for free boundary minimal submanifolds in a Riemannian manifold with boundary, in any dimension and codimension. Our result holds more generally in the context of varifolds.