Computing uniformization maps for surfaces has been a challenging problem and has many practical applications. In this paper, we provide a theoretically rigorous algorithm to compute such maps via combinatorial Calabi flow for vertex scaling of polyhedral metrics on surfaces, which is an analogue of the combinatorial Yamabe flow introduced by Luo (Commun Contemp Math 6(5):765–780, 2004). To handle the singularies along the combinatorial Calabi flow, we do surgery on the flow by flipping. Using the discrete conformal theory established in Gu et al. (J Differ Geom 109(3):431–466, 2018; J Differ Geom 109(2):223–256, 2018), we prove that for any initial Euclidean or hyperbolic polyhedral metric on a closed surface, the combinatorial Calabi flow with surgery exists for all time and converges exponentially fast after finite number of surgeries. The convergence is independent of the combinatorial structure of the initial triangulation on the surface.

Given an involution on a rational homology 3-sphere Y with quotient the 3-sphere, we prove a formula for the Lefschetz number of the map induced by this involution in the reduced monopole Floer homology. This formula is motivated by a variant of Witten's conjecture relating the Donaldson and Seiberg--Witten invariants of 4-manifolds. A key ingredient is a skein-theoretic argument, making use of an exact triangle in monopole Floer homology, that computes the Lefschetz number in terms of the Murasugi signature of the branch set and the sum of Frøyshov invariants associated to spin structures on Y. We discuss various applications of our formula in gauge theory, knot theory, contact geometry, and 4-dimensional topology.

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.

We propose a finite-dimensional variational principle on triangulated 3-manifolds so that its critical points are related to solutions to Thurstons gluing equation and Hakens normal surface equation. The action functional is the volume.

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.