Wave dynamics in topological materials has been widely studied recently. A striking feature is the existence of robust and chiral wave propagations that have potential applications in many fields. A common way to realize such wave patterns is to utilize Dirac points which carry topological indices and is supported by the symmetries of the media. In this work, we investigate these phenomena in photonic media. Starting with Maxwell's equations with a honeycomb material weight as well as the nonlinear Kerr effect, we first prove the existence of Dirac points in the dispersion surfaces of transverse electric and magnetic Maxwell operators under very general assumptions of the material weight. Our assumptions on the material weight are almost the minimal requirements to ensure the existence of Dirac points in a general hexagonal photonic crystal. We then derive the associated wave packet dynamics in the scenario where the honeycomb structure is weakly modulated. It turns out the reduced envelope equation is generally a two-dimensional nonlinear Dirac equation with a spatially varying mass. By studying the reduced envelope equation with a domain-wall-like mass term, we realize the subtle wave motions which are chiral and immune to local defects. The underlying mechanism is the existence of topologically protected linear line modes, also referred to as edge states. However, we show that these robust linear modes do not survive with nonlinearity. We demonstrate the existence of nonlinear line modes, which can propagate in the nonlinear media based on high-accuracy numerical computations. Moreover, we also report a new type of nonlinear modes which are localized in both directions.

The phase space of a particle or a mechanical system contains an intrinsic symplectic structure, and hence, it is a symplectic manifold. Recently, new invariants for symplectic manifolds in terms of cohomologies of differential forms have been introduced by Tseng and Yau. Here, we discuss the physical motivation behind the new symplectic invariants and analyze these invariants for phase space, i.e., the non-compact cotangent bundle.

Consider an N-Boson system interacting via a two-body repulsive short-range potential $V$ in a three dimensional box  of side length $L$. We take the $limit N,L \to \infty $ while keeping the density $\rho = N/L^3 fixed and small. We prove a new lower bound for its ground state energy per particle $$ \frac{E(N,\Lambda)}{N} \ge 4 \pi a \rho [1- O(\rho^{1/3} | log \rho |^3) ] $$ as $\rho \to 0$, where $a$ is the scattering length of $V$.

Classical two-dimensional Liouville gravity is often considered in conformal gauge which has a residual left and right Virasoro symmetry algebra. We consider an alternate, chiral, gauge which has a residual right Virasoro Kac-Moody algebra, and no left Virasoro algebra. The Kac-Moody zero mode is the left-moving energy. Dirac brackets of the constrained Hamiltonian theory are derived, and the residual symmetries are shown to be generated by integrals of the conserved chiral currents. The central charge and Kac-Moody level are computed. The possible existence of a corresponding quantum theory is discussed.

Alexandrov proved that any simplicial complex homeomorphic to a sphere with strictly non-negative Gaussian curvature at each vertex can be isometrically embedded uniquely in {{\mathbb {R}}}^{3} as a convex polyhedron. Due to the nonconstructive nature of his proof, there have yet to be any algorithms, that we know of, that realizes the Alexandrov embedding in polynomial time. Following his proof, we developed the adiabatic isometric mapping (AIM) algorithm. AIM uses a guided adiabatic pull-back procedure on a given polyhedral metric to produce an embedding that approximates the unique Alexandrov polyhedron. Tests of AIM applied to two different polyhedral metrics suggests that its run time is sub cubic with respect to the number of vertices. Although Alexandrov's theorem specifically addresses the embedding of convex polyhedral metrics, we tested AIM on a broader class of polyhedral metrics that included regions of