We define a notion of stability for chiral ring of four dimensional N= 1 theory by introducing test chiral rings and generalized a maximization. We conjecture that a chiral ring is the chiral ring of a superconformal field theory if and only if it is stable. We then study N= 1 field theory derived from D3 branes probing a three-fold singularity X, and show that the K stability which implies the existence of Ricci-flat conic metric on X is equivalent to the stability of chiral ring of the corresponding field theory.

This is the first of a series of papers in which we systematically use singularity theory to study four dimensional N= 2 superconformal field theories. Our main focus in this paper is to identify what kind of singularity is needed to define a SCFT. The constraint for a hypersurface singularity has been found by Sharpere and Vafa, and here the complete set of solutions are listed using a related mathematical result of Stephen ST Yau and Yu. We also study other type of singularities such as the complete intersection, quotient of hypersurface singularity by a finite group and non-isolated singularity. We finally conjecture that any three dimensional rational Gorenstein graded isolated singularity should define a N= 2 SCFT. We explain how to extract various interesting physical quantities such as Seiberg-Witten geometry, central charges, exact marginal deformations, BPS quiver, RG flow trajectory, etc from the properties of singularity.

Motivated by the important work of Brown and York on quasilocal energy, we propose definitions of quasilocal energy and momentum surface energy of a spacelike 2-surface with a positive intrinsic curvature in a spacetime. We show that the quasilocal energy of the boundary of a compact spacelike hypersurface which satisfies the local energy condition is strictly positive unless the spacetime is flat along the spacelike hypersurface.

The classification and construction of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in interacting boson and fermion systems have become a fascinating theoretical direction in recent years. It has been shown that (generalized) group cohomology theory or cobordism theory gives rise to a complete classification of SPT phases in interacting boson or spin systems. The construction and classification of SPT phases in interacting fermion systems are much more complicated, especially in three dimensions. In this work, we revisit this problem based on an equivalence class of fermionic symmetric local unitary transformations. We construct very general fixed-point SPT wave functions for interacting fermion systems. We naturally reproduce the partial classifications given by special group supercohomology theory, and we show that with an additional \tilde{B}H^2(G_b,\mathbb{Z}_2) structure [the so-called obstruction-free subgroup of H^2(G_b,\mathbb{Z}_2)], a complete classification of SPT phases for three-dimensional interacting fermion systems with a total symmetry group G_f = G_b × \mathbb{Z}^f_2 can be obtained for unitary symmetry group G_b. We also discuss the procedure for deriving a general group supercohomology theory in arbitrary dimensions.

We study a static, spherically symmetric system of (2j+ 1) massive Dirac particles, each having angular momentum j, j= 1, 2,..., in a classical gravitational and SU (2) Yang-Mills field. We show that for any black hole solution of the associated Einstein-Dirac-Yang/Mills equations, the spinors must vanish identically outside of the event horizon.