The embedded cobordism category under study in this paper generalizes the category of conformal surfaces, introduced by G. Segal in [S2] in order to formalize the concept of field theories. Our main result identifies the homotopy type of the classifying space of the embedded$d$-dimensional cobordism category for all$d$. For$d$= 2, our results lead to a new proof of the generalized Mumford conjecture, somewhat different in spirit from the original one, presented in [MW].

We calculate the small quantum orbifold cohomology of arbitrary weighted projective spaces. We generalize Givental’s heuristic argument, which relates small quantum cohomology to$S$^{1}-equivariant Floer cohomology of loop space, to weighted projective spaces and use this to conjecture an explicit formula for the small$J$-function, a generating function for certain genus-zero Gromov–Witten invariants. We prove this conjecture using a method due to Bertram. This provides the first non-trivial example of a family of orbifolds of arbitrary dimension for which the small quantum orbifold cohomology is known. In addition we obtain formulas for the small$J$-functions of weighted projective complete intersections satisfying a combinatorial condition; this condition naturally singles out the class of orbifolds with terminal singularities.

We prove that the chordal contour lines of the discrete Gaussian free field converge to forms of SLE(4). Specifically, there is a constant λ > 0 such that when$h$is an interpolation of the discrete Gaussian free field on a Jordan domain—with boundary values −λ on one boundary arc and λ on the complementary arc—the zero level line of$h$joining the endpoints of these arcs converges to SLE(4) as the domain grows larger. If instead the boundary values are −$a$< 0 on the first arc and b > 0 on the complementary arc, then the convergence is to SLE(4;$a$/λ - 1,$b$/λ - 1), a variant of SLE(4).

We count the number$S$($x$) of quadruples $ {\left( {x_{1} ,x_{2} ,x_{3} ,x_{4} } \right)} \in \mathbb{Z}^{4} $ for which $$ p = x^{2}_{1} + x^{2}_{2} + x^{2}_{3} + x^{2}_{4} \leqslant x $$ is a prime number and satisfying the determinant condition:$x$_{1}$x$_{4}−$x$_{2}$x$_{3}= 1. By means of the sieve, one shows easily the upper bound$S$($x$) ≪$x$/log$x$. Under a hypothesis about prime numbers, which is stronger than the Bombieri–Vinogradov theorem but is weaker than the Elliott–Halberstam conjecture, we prove that this order is correct, that is$S$($x$) ≫$x$/log$x$.

We establish the existence of infinitely many$polynomial$progressions in the primes; more precisely, given any integer-valued polynomials$P$_{1}, …,$P$_{$k$}∈$Z$[$m$] in one unknown$m$with$P$_{1}(0) = … =$P$_{$k$}(0) = 0, and given any$ε$> 0, we show that there are infinitely many integers$x$and$m$, with $1 \leqslant m \leqslant x^\varepsilon$ , such that$x$+$P$_{1}($m$), …,$x$+$P$_{$k$}($m$) are simultaneously prime. The arguments are based on those in [18], which treated the linear case$P$_{$j$}= ($j$− 1)$m$and$ε$= 1; the main new features are a localization of the shift parameters (and the attendant Gowers norm objects) to both coarse and fine scales, the use of PET induction to linearize the polynomial averaging, and some elementary estimates for the number of points over finite fields in certain algebraic varieties.