Published in 1999, Christodoulou proved that the naked singularities of a self-gravitating scalar field are not stable in spherical symmetry and therefore the cosmic censorship conjecture is true in this context. The original proof is by contradiction and sharp estimates are obtained strictly depending on spherical symmetry. In this paper, appropriate a priori estimates for the solution are obtained. These estimates are more relaxed but sufficient for giving another robust argument in proving the instability, in particular not by contradiction. In a companion paper, we are able to prove certain instability theorems of the spherically symmetric naked singularities of a scalar field under gravitational perturbations without symmetries. The argument given in this paper plays a central role.

Suppose V^G is the fixed-point vertex operator subalgebra of a compact group G acting on a simple abelian intertwining algebra V. We show that if all irreducible V^G-modules contained in V live in some braided tensor category of V^G-modules, then they generate a tensor subcategory equivalent to the category Rep G of finite-dimensional representations of G, with associativity and braiding isomorphisms modified by the abelian 3-cocycle defining the abelian intertwining algebra structure on V. Additionally, we show that if the fusion rules for the irreducible V^G-modules contained in V agree with the dimensions of spaces of intertwiners among G-modules, then the irreducibles contained in V already generate a braided tensor category of V^G-modules. These results do not require rigidity on any tensor category of V^G-modules and thus apply to many examples where braided tensor category structure is known to exist but rigidity is not known; for example they apply when V^G is C_2-cofinite but not necessarily rational. When V^G is both C_2-cofinite and rational and V is a vertex operator algebra, we use the equivalence between Rep G and the corresponding subcategory of V^G-modules to show that V is also rational. As another application, we show that a certain category of modules for the Virasoro algebra at central charge 1 admits a braided tensor category structure equivalent to Rep SU(2), up to modification by an abelian 3-cocycle.

We study the differential polynomial rings which are defined using the special geometry of the moduli spaces of Calabi-Yau threefolds. The higher genus topological string amplitudes are expressed as polynomials in the generators of these rings, giving them a global description in the moduli space. At particular loci, the amplitudes yield the generating functions of Gromov-Witten invariants. We show that these rings are isomorphic to the rings of quasi modular forms for threefolds with duality groups for which these are known. For the other cases, they provide generalizations thereof. We furthermore study an involution which acts on the quasi modular forms. We interpret it as a duality which exchanges two distinguished expansion loci of the topological string amplitudes in the moduli space. We construct these special polynomial rings and match them with known quasi modular forms for non-compact Calabi-Yau geometries and their

We relate commutative algebras in braided tensor categories to braid-reversed tensor equivalences, motivated by vertex algebra representation theory. First, for C a braided tensor category, we give a detailed construction of the canonical algebra in C⊠C^rev: if C is semisimple but not necessarily finite or rigid, then ⨁X∈Irr(C) X′⊠X is a commutative algebra, with X′ a representing object for Hom_C(∙⊗_C X,1_C). Conversely, let A=⨁i∈I U_i ⊠ V_i be a simple commutative algebra in U⊠V with U semisimple and rigid but not necessarily finite, and V rigid but not necessarily semisimple. If the unit objects of U and V form a commuting pair in A, we show there is a braid-reversed equivalence between subcategories of U and V sending U_i to (V_i)*. When U and V are module categories for simple vertex operator algebras U and V, we glue U and V along U⊠V via a map τ: Irr(U)→Obj(V) such that τ(U)=V to create A=⨁X∈Irr(U) X′⊗τ(X). Thus under certain conditions, τ extends to a braid-reversed equivalence between U and V if and only if A is a simple conformal vertex algebra extending U⊗V. As examples, we glue Kazhdan-Lusztig categories at generic levels to obtain new vertex algebras extending the tensor product of two affine vertex algebras, and we prove braid-reversed equivalences between certain module categories for affine vertex algebras and W-algebras at admissible levels.

Near-superradiant scattering of charged scalars and fermions by a near-extreme Kerr-Newman black hole and photons and gravitons by a near-extreme Kerr black hole are computed as certain Fourier transforms of correlators in a two-dimensional conformal field theory. The results agree with the classic spacetime calculations from the 1970s, thereby providing good evidence for a conjectured Kerr-Newman/CFT correspondence.