The Cauchy problem is considered for the scalar wave equation in the Kerr geometry. We prove that by choosing a suitable wave packet as initial data, one can extract energy from the black hole, thereby putting supperradiance, the wave analogue of the Penrose process, into a rigorous mathematical framework. We quantify the maximal energy gain. We also compute the infinitesimal change of mass and angular momentum of the black hole, in agreement with Christodoulous result for the Penrose process. The main mathematical tool is our previously derived integral representation of the wave propagator.

A large class of symmetry-protected topological phases (SPT) in boson / spin systems have been recently predicted by the group cohomology theory. In this work, we consider SPT states at least with charge symmetry (U(1) or ZN) or spin Sz rotation symmetry (U(1) or ZN) in 2D, 3D, and the surface of 3D. If both are U(1), we apply external electromagnetic field / `spin gauge field' to study the charge / spin response. For the SPT examples we consider (i.e. Uc(1)⋊ZT2, Us(1)×ZT2, Uc(1)×[Us(1)⋊Z2]; subscripts c and s are short for charge and spin; ZT2 and Z2 are time-reversal symmetry and π-rotation about Sy, respectively), many variants of Witten effect in the 3D SPT bulk and various versions of anomalous surface quantum Hall effect are defined and systematically investigated. If charge or spin symmetry reduces to ZN by considering charge-N or spin-N condensate, instead of the linear response approach, we gauge the charge/spin symmetry, leading to a dynamical gauge theory with some remaining global symmetry. The 3D dynamical gauge theory describes a symmetry-enriched topological phase (SET), i.e. a topologically ordered state with global symmetry which admits nontrivial ground state degeneracy depending on spatial manifold topology. For the SPT examples we consider, the corresponding SET states are described by dynamical topological gauge theory with topological BF term and axionic Θ-term in 3D bulk. And the surface of SET is described by the chiral boson theory with quantum anomaly.

We describe the applications of localization methods, in particular the functorial localization formula, in the proofs of several conjectures from string theory. Functorial localization formula pushes the computations on complicated moduli spaces to simple moduli spaces. It is a key technique in the proof of the general mirror formulas, the proof of the Hori-Vafa formulas for explicit expressions of basic hypergeometric series of homogeneous manifolds, the proof of the Mario-Vafa formula, its generalizations to two partition analogue. We will also discuss our development of the mathematical theory of topological vertex and simple localization proofs of the ELSV formula and Witten conjecture.

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Based on examples from superstring/D-brane theory since the work of Douglas and Moore on resolution of singularities of a superstring target-space Y via a D-brane probe, the richness and the complexity of the stack of punctual D0-branes on a variety, and as a guiding question, we lay down a conjecture that any resolution Y of a variety Y over Y can be factored through an embedding of Y into the stack Y of punctual D0-branes of rank Y on Y for Y in Y , where Y depends on the germ of singularities of Y . We prove that this conjecture holds for the resolution Y of a reduced singular curve Y over Y . In string-theoretical language, this says that the resolution Y of a singular curve Y always arises from an appropriate D0-brane aggregation on Y and that the rank of the Chan-Paton module of the D0-branes involved can be chosen to be arbitrarily large.