We study geodesics in the random metric space called the Brownian map, which appears as the scaling limit of large planar maps. In particular, we completely describe geodesics starting from the distinguished point called the root, and we characterize the set$S$of all points that are connected to the root by more than one geodesic. The set$S$is dense in the Brownian map and homeomorphic to a non-compact real tree. Furthermore, for every$x$in$S$, the number of distinct geodesics from x to the root is equal to the number of connected components of$S$\{$x$}. In particular, points of the Brownian map can be connected to the root by at most three distinct geodesics. Our results have applications to the behavior of geodesics in large planar maps.

We consider singular integral operators of the form (a)$Z$_{1}L^{−1}Z_{2}, (b)$Z$_{1}Z_{2}L^{−1}, and (c)$L$^{−1}Z_{1}Z_{2}, where$Z$_{1}and$Z$_{2}are nonzero right-invariant vector fields, and$L$is the$L$^{2}-closure of a canonical Laplacian. The operators (a) are shown to be bounded on$L$^{p}for all$p$∈(1, ∞) and of weak type (1, 1), whereas all of the operators in (b) and (c) are not of weak type ($p, p$) for any$p$∈[1, ∞).

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Due to the length this work is published in two parts. The second part will appear in Vol 23: 1 of this journal.

In this note we establish some general finiteness results concerning lattices Γ in connected Lie groups$G$which possess certain “density” properties (see$Moskowitz$, M., On the density theorems of Borel and Furstenberg,$Ark. Mat.$$16$(1978), 11–27, and$Moskowitz$, M., Some results on automorphisms of bounded displacement and bounded cocycles,$Monatsh. Math.$$85$(1978), 323–336). For such groups we show that Γ always has finite index in its normalizer$N$_{$G$}(Γ). We then investigate analogous questions for the automorphism group Aut($G$) proving, under appropriate conditions, that Stab_{Aut($G$)}(Γ) is discrete. Finally we show, under appropriate conditions, that the subgroup $\tilde{\Gamma}=\{i_{\gamma}:\gamma \in \Gamma \},\ i_{\gamma}(x)=\gamma x\gamma^{-1}$ , of Aut($G$) has finite index in Stab_{Aut($G$)}(Γ). We test the limits of our results with various examples and counterexamples.