A sharp result on global small solutions to the Cauchy problem $$u_t = \Delta u + f\left( {u,Du,D^2 u,u_t } \right)\left( {t > 0} \right),u\left( 0 \right) = u_0 $$

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.

A birational transformation f: P^n --> Z, where Z is a nonsingular variety of Picard number 1, is called a special birational transformation of type (a, b) if f is given by a linear system of degree a, its inverse is given by a linear system of degree b and the base locus S \subset P^n of f is irreducible and nonsingular. In this paper, we classify special birational transformations of type (2,1). In addition to previous works Alzati-Sierra and Russo on this topic, our proof employs natural C^*-actions on Z in a crucial way. These C^*-actions also relate our result to the problem studied in our previous work on smooth projective varieties with nonzero prolongations.

We compute the open Gromov-Witten invariants for every compact semi-Fano toric surface, i.e. a toric surface X with nef anticanonical bundle. Unlike the Fano case, this involves non-trivial obstructions in the corresponding moduli problem. As an application, an explicit expression of the superpotential W for the mirror of X is obtained, which in turn gives an explicit ring presentation of the small quantum cohomology of X. We also give a computational verification of the natural ring isomorphism between the small quantum cohomology of X and the Jacobian ring of W.

In this paper, we study the <i></i>-ordinary locus of a Shimura variety with parahoric level structure. Under the axioms in [12], we show that <i></i>-ordinary locus is a union of certain maximal EkedahlKottwitzOortRapoport strata introduced in [12] and we give criteria on the density of the <i></i>-ordinary locus.