We exhibit the first examples of hyperbolic three-manifolds for which the Seiberg-Witten equations do not admit any irreducible solution. Our approach relies on hyperbolic geometry in an essential way; it combines an explicit upper bound for the first eigenvalue on coexact 1-forms λ_1^* on rational homology spheres which admit irreducible solutions together with a version of the Selberg trace formula relating the spectrum of the Laplacian on coexact 1-forms with the volume and complex length spectrum of a hyperbolic three-manifold. Using these relationships, we also provide precise numerical bounds on λ_1^* for several hyperbolic rational homology spheres.

We give a detailed proof of Siu’s theorem on extendibility of holomorphic vector bundles of rank larger than one, and prove a corresponding extension theorem for holomorphic sprays. We apply this result to study ellipticity properties of complements of compact subsets in Stein manifolds. In particular we show that the complement of a closed ball in $\mathbb{C}^{n}, n \geq3$ , is not subelliptic.

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