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.

Fix a number $g>1$, let $S$ be a close surface of genus $g$ and $\Teich(S)$ be the Teichm\"uller space of $S$ endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we show that the Riemannian sectional curvature operator of $\Teich(S)$ is non-positive definite. As an application we show that any twist harmonic map from rank-one hyperbolic spaces $H_{Q,m}=Sp(m,1)/Sp(m)\cdot Sp(1)$ or $H_{O,2}=F_{4}^{-20}/SO(9)$ into $\Teich(S)$ is a constant.

We define a new combinatorial class of triangulations of closed 3-manifolds, satisfying a weak version of 0-efficiency combined with a weak version of minimality, and study them using twisted squares. As an application, we obtain strong restrictions on the topology of a 3-manifold from the existence of non-smooth maxima of the volume function on the space of circle-valued angle structures.

We generalise work of Young-Eun Choi to the setting of ideal triangulations with vertex links of arbitrary genus, showing that the set of all (possibly incomplete) hyperbolic cone-manifold structures realised by positively oriented hyperbolic ideal tetrahedra on a given topological ideal triangulation and with prescribed cone angles at all edges is (if non-empty) a smooth complex manifold of dimension the sum of the genera of the vertex links. Moreover, we show that the complex lengths of a collection of peripheral elements give a local holomorphic parameterisation of this manifold.

In this paper the authors study the hyperbolic geometric flow on Riemann surfaces. This new nonlinear geometric evolution equation was recently introduced by the first two authors, motivated by Einstein equation and Hamilton's Ricci flow. We prove that, for any given initial metric on ² in certain class of metrics, one can always choose suitable initial velocity symmetric tensor such that the solution exists for all time, and the scalar curvature corresponding to the solution metric <i>g</i> _<i>ij</i> keeps uniformly bounded for all time; moreover, if the initial velocity tensor is suitably large", then the solution metric <i>g</i> _<i>ij</i> converges to the flat metric at an algebraic rate. If the initial velocity tensor does not satisfy the condition, then the solution blows up at a finite time, and the scalar curvature <i>R</i>(<i>t</i>, <i>x</i>) goes to positive infinity as (<i>t</i>, <i>x</i>) tends to the blowup points, and a flow with surgery has