We are interested in the 3-Calabi-Yau categories D arising from quivers with potential associated to a triangulated marked surface S (without punctures). We prove that the spherical twist group ST of D is isomorphic to a subgroup (generated by braid twists) of the mapping class group of the decorated marked surface S_Delta. Here S_Delta is the surface obtained from S by decorating with a set of points, where the number of points equals the number of triangles in any triangulations of S. For instance, when S is an annulus, the result implies that the corresponding spaces of stability conditions on D are contractible.

We construct an integrable hierarchy in the form of Hirota quadratic equations (HQE) that governs the Gromov--Witten (GW) invariants of the Fano orbifold projective curve P^1_{a1,a2,a3}. The vertex operators in our construction are given in terms of the K-theory of P^1_{a1,a2,a3} via Iritani's Γ-class modification of the Chern character map. We also identify our HQEs with an appropriate Kac--Wakimoto hierarchy of ADE type. In particular, we obtain a generalization of the famous Toda conjecture about the GW invariants of P^1 .

In this paper, we reprove a global converse theorem of Cogdell and Piatetski-Shapiro using purely global methods.

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.

In his monograph Arthur (The endoscopic classification of representations: orthogonal and symplectic groups, Colloquium Publications, American Mathematical Society, Providence, 2013) characterizes the L-packets of quasisplit symplectic groups and orthogonal groups. By extending his work, we characterize the L-packets for the corresponding similitude groups with desired properties. In particular, we show these packets satisfy the conjectural endoscopic character identities.