We classify three fold isolated quotient Gorenstein singularity C^ 3/G . These singularities are rigid, ie there is no non-trivial deformation, and we conjecture that they define 4d C^ 3/G SCFTs which do not have a Coulomb branch.

We extend our previous proof of the positive mass conjecture to allow a more general asymptotic condition proposed by York. Hence we are able to prove that for an isolated physical system, the energy momentum four vector is a future timelike vector unless the system is trivial. Furthermore, we allow singularities of the type of black holes.

We explore how introducing a non-trivial Mordell-Weil group changes the structure of the Coulomb phases of a five-dimensional gauge theory from an M-theory compactified on an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds with a I _2 + I _2 collision of singularities. The resulting gauge theory has a semi-simple Lie algebra _2 or _2 . We compute topological invariants relevant for the physics, such as the Euler characteristic, Hodge numbers, and triple intersection numbers. We determine the matter representation geometrically by computing weights via intersection of curves and fibral divisors. We fix the number of charged hypermultiplets transforming in each representations by comparing the triple intersection numbers and the one-loop prepotential. This condition is enough to fix the number of representation when the Mordell-Weil group is _2 but not when it is trivial. The vanishing of the fourth power of the curvature forms in the anomaly polynomial is enough to fix the number of representations. We discuss anomaly cancellations of the six-dimensional uplifted. In particular, the gravitational anomaly is also considered as the Hodge numbers are computed explicitly without counting the degrees of freedom of the Weierstrass equation.

We find some integrability conditions for low-dimensional manifolds to admit metrics with nonnegative scalar curvature. In particular, we solve the positive action conjecture in general relativity in the affirmative.

In this continuation of [L-Y1],[LLSY],[L-Y2], and [L-Y3](arXiv: 0709.1515 [math. AG], arXiv: 0809.2121 [math. AG], arXiv: 0901.0342 [math. AG], arXiv: 0907.0268 [math. AG]), we study D-branes in a target-space with a fixed B -field background B along the line of the Polchinski-Grothendieck Ansatz, explained in [L-Y1] and further extended in the current work. We focus first on the gauge-field-twist effect of B -field to the Chan-Paton module on D-branes. Basic properties of the moduli space of D-branes, as morphisms from Azumaya schemes with a twisted fundamental module to B , are given. For holomorphic D-strings, we prove a valuation-criterion property of this moduli space. The setting is then extended to take into account also the deformation-quantization-type noncommutative geometry effect of B -field to both the D-brane world-volume and the superstring target-space (-time) B . This brings the notion of twisted B -modules that are realizable as twisted locally-free coherent modules with a flat connection into the study. We use this to realize the notion of both the classical and the quantum spectral covers as morphisms from Azumaya schemes with a fundamental module (with a flat connection in the latter case) in a very special situation. The 3rd theme (subtitled" Sharp vs. Polchinski-Grothendieck") of Sec. 2.2 is to be read with the work [Sh3](arXiv: hep-th/0102197) of Sharp while Sec. 5.2 (subtitled less appropriately" Dijkgraaf-Holland-Sukowski-Vafa vs. Polchinski-Grothendieck") is to be read with the related sections in [DHSV](arXiv: 0709.4446 [hep-th]) and [DHS](arXiv: 0810.4157 [hep-th]) of Dijkgraaf, Hollands, Sukowski, and Vafa.