Let (M, g) be a complete 3-dimensional asymptotically flat manifold with everywhere positive scalar curvature. We prove that, given a compact subset K  M, all volume preserving stable constant mean curvature surfaces of sufficiently large area will avoid K. This complements the results of G. Huisken and S.-T. Yau [17] and of J. Qing and G. Tian [26] on the uniqueness of large volume preserving stable constant mean curvature spheres in initial data sets that are asymptotically close to Schwarzschild with mass m > 0. The analysis in [17] and [26] takes place in the asymptotic regime of M. Here we adapt ideas from the minimal surface proof of the positive mass theorem [32] by R. Schoen and S.-T. Yau and develop geometric properties of volume preserving stable constant mean curvature surfaces to handle surfaces that run through the part of M that is far from Euclidean.

In this paper, we completely classify all compact 4-manifolds with positive isotropic curvature. We show that they are diffeomorphic to S4 or RP4 or quotients of S3 ×R by a cocompact fixed point free subgroup of the isometry group of the standard metric of S3 × R, or a connected sum of them.

We prove that many aspects of the differential geometry of embedded Riemannian manifolds can be formulated in terms of multi-linear algebraic structures on the space of smooth functions. In particular, we find algebraic expressions for Weingarten’s formula, the Ricci curvature, and the Codazzi-Mainardi equations. For matrix analogues of embedded surfaces, we define discrete curvatures and Euler characteristics, and a non-commutative GaussBonnet theorem is shown to follow. We derive simple expressions for the discrete Gauss curvature in terms of matrices representing the embedding coordinates, and explicit examples are provided. Furthermore, we illustrate the fact that techniques from differential geometry can carry over to matrix analogues by proving that a bound on the discrete Gauss curvature implies a bound on the eigenvalues of the discrete Laplace operator.

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We describe a new family of representations of 1() in PU(2,1), where  is a hyperbolic Riemann surface with at least one deleted point. This family is obtained by a bending process associated to an ideal triangulation of . We give an explicit description of this family by describing a coordinates system in the spirit of shear coordinates on the Teichm¨uller space. We identify within this family new examples of discrete, faithful, and type-preserving representations of 1(). In turn, we obtain a 1-parameter family of embeddings of the Teichm¨uller space of  in the PU(2,1)-representation variety of 1(). These results generalise to arbitrary  the results obtained in [42] for the 1-punctured torus.