This article considers the quasi-local energy in reference to a general static spacetime. We follow the approach developed by the authors in [19, 20, 7, 9] and define the quasi-local energy as a difference of surface Hamiltonians, which are derived from the Einstein-Hilbert action. The new quasi-local energy provides an effective gauge independent measurement of how far a spacetime deviates away from the reference static spacetime on a finitely extended region.

It is argued that every Calabi-Yau manifold <i>X</i> with a mirror <i>Y</i> admits a family of supersymmetric toroidal 3-cycles. Moreover the moduli space of such cycles together with their flat connections is precisely the space <i>Y</i>. The mirror transformation is equivalent to <i>T</i>-duality on the 3-cycles. The geometry of moduli space is addressed in a general framework. Several examples are discussed.

Wehrl used Glauber coherent states to define a map from quantum density matrices to classical phase space densities and conjectured that for Glauber coherent states the mininimum classical entropy would occur for density matrices equal to projectors onto coherent states. This was proved by Lieb in 1978 who also extended the conjecture to Bloch SU(2) spin-coherent states for every angular momentum$J$. This conjecture is proved here. We also recall our 1991 extension of the Wehrl map to a quantum channel from J to $${K=J+\frac{1}{2}, J+1, ... ,}$$ with $${K=\infty}$$ corresponding to the Wehrl map to classical densities. These channels were later recognized as the optimal quantum cloning channels. For each$J$and $${J < K \leqslant \infty}$$ we show that the minimal output entropy for the channels occurs for a J coherent state. We also show that coherent states both Glauber and Bloch minimize any concave functional, not just entropy.

In a recent paper (arXiv: ) it was shown that all global energy eigenstates of asymptotically $AdS_3$ chiral gravity have non-negative energy at the linearized level. This result was questioned (arXiv: ) by Carlip, Deser, Waldron and Wise (CDWW), who work on the Poincare patch. They exhibit a linearized solution of chiral gravity and claim that it has negative energy and is smooth at the boundary. We show that the solution of CDWW is smooth only on that part of the boundary of $AdS_3$ included in the Poincare patch. Extended to global $AdS_3$, it is divergent at the boundary point not included in the Poincare patch. Hence it is consistent with the results of (arXiv: 0801.4566).

Let Ω be a Greenian domain in ℝ^{$d$},$d$≥2, or—more generally—let Ω be a connected $\mathcal{P}$ -Brelot space satisfying axiom D, and let$u$be a numerical function on Ω, $u\not\equiv\infty$ , which is locally bounded from below. A short proof yields the following result: The function$u$is the infimum of its superharmonic majorants if and only if each set {$x$:$u$($x$)>$t$},$t$∈ℝ, differs from an analytic set only by a polar set and $\int u\,d\mu_{x}^{V}\le u(x)$ , whenever$V$is a relatively compact open set in Ω and$x$∈$V$.