We establish a generic vanishing theorem for surfaces in characteristic p that lift to p and use it for classification of surfaces of general type with Euler characteristic p and large Albanese dimension.

1. INDEX THEORY, ELLIPTIC CURVES AND LOOP GROUPS One can look at elliptic genus from several different points of view; from index theory, from representation theory of Kac-Moody affine Lie algebras or from the theory of elliptic functions and modular forms. Each of them shows us some quite different interesting features of ellitic genus. On the other hand we can also combine the forces of these three different mathematical fields to derive many interesting results in topology such as rigidity, divisibility and vanishing of topological invariants..

A reconstruction theorem for genus 0 gravitational quantum cohomology and quantum K-theory is proved. A new linear equivalence in the Picard group of the moduli space of genus 0 stable maps relating the pull-backs of line bundles from the target via different markings is used for the reconstruction result. Examples of calculations in quantum cohomology and quantum K-theory are given.

This an expository article on Givental's axiomatic Gromov--Witten theory and some of its applications.

The main goal of this paper is to prove the following two conjectures for genus up to two: 1. Witten's conjecture on the relations between higher spin curves and Gelfand--Dickey hierarchy. 2. Virasoro conjecture for target manifolds with conformal semisimple Frobenius manifolds. The main technique used in the proof is the invariance of tautological equations under loop group action.