The absorption rate of low-energy, or soft, electromagnetic radiation by spherically symmetric black holes in arbitrary dimensions is shown to be fixed by conservation of energy and large gauge transformations. We interpret this result as the explicit realization of the Hawking-Perry-Strominger Ward identity for large gauge transformations in the background of a non-evaporating black hole. Along the way we rederive and extend previous analytic results regarding the absorption rate for the minimal scalar and the photon.

In this note we propose a generalization of heterotic/F-theory duality. We introduce a set of non-compact building blocks which we glue together to reach compact examples of generalized duality pairs. The F-theory building blocks consist of non-compact elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau fourfolds which also admit a K3 fibration. The compact elliptic model obtained by gluing need not have a globally defined K3 fibration. By replacing the K3 fiber of each F-theory building block with a T2, we reach building blocks in a heterotic dual vacuum which includes a position dependent dilaton and three-form flux. These building blocks are glued together to reach a heterotic flux background. We argue that in these vacua, the gauge fields of the heterotic string become localized, and remain dynamical even when gravity decouples. This enables a heterotic dual for the hyperflux GUT breaking mechanism which has recently figured prominently in F-theory GUT models. We illustrate our general proposal with some explicit examples.

We prove that if a curve of a non-isotrivial family of abelian varieties over a curve contains infinitely many isogeny orbits of a finitely generated subgroup of a simple abelian variety then it is special. This result fits into the context of Zilber-Pink conjecture and partially generalizes a result of Faltings. Moreover by using the polyhedral reduction theory we give a new proof of a result of Bertrand.

We construct SYZ mirrors of the local Calabi–Yau manifolds of type à by developing an equivariant SYZ theory for the toric Calabi–Yau manifolds of infinite-type. The equations for the SYZ mirrors involve the Riemann theta functions and generating functions of the open Gromov–Witten invariants. We obtain explicit formulae for the generating functions which are open analogs of the Yau–Zaslow formula in dimension 2, and show that they have nice modular properties. We also relate the SYZ mirror pairs with mirror symmetry for the abelian varieties and hypersurfaces therein.

We prove that the punctured generalized conifolds and punctured orbifolded conifolds are mirror symmetric under the SYZ program with quantum corrections. This mathematically confirms the gauge-theoretic prediction by Aganagic–Karch–L¨ust–Miemiec, and also provides a supportive evidence to Morrison’s conjecture that geometric transitions are reversed under mirror symmetry.