We prove that the quotient space of a variationally complete group action is a good Riemannian orbifold. The result is generalized to singular Riemannian foliations without horizontal conjugate points.

Given a compact orientable surface, we determine a complete set of relations for a function defined on the set of all homotopy classes of simple loops to be a geometric intersection number function. As a consequence, Thurston’s space of measured laminations and Thurston’s compactification of the Teichm¨uller space are described by a set of explicit equations. These equations are polynomials in the max-plus semi-ring structure on the real numbers. It shows that Thurston’s theory of measured laminations is within the domain of tropical geometry.

In this article we show that any hyperbolic Inoue surface (also called Inoue-Hirzebruch surface of even type) admits anti-self-dual bihermitian structures. The same result holds for any of its small deformations as far as its anti-canonical system is non-empty. Similar results are obtained for parabolic Inoue surfaces. Our method also yields a family of anti-self-dual hermitian metrics on any half Inoue surface. We use the twistor method of Donaldson-Friedman [13] for the proof.

The Bieberbach estimate, a pivotal result in the classical theory of univalent functions, states that any injective holomorphic function f on the open unit disc D satisfies |f′′(0)| ≤ 4|f′(0)|. We generalize the Bieberbach estimate by proving a version of the inequality that applies to all injective smooth conformal immersions f : D → Rn, n ≥ 2. The new estimate involves two correction terms. The first one is geometric, coming from the second fundamental form of the image surface f(D). The second term is of a dynamical nature, and involves certain Riemannian quantities associated to conformal attractors. Our results are partly motivated by a conjecture in the theory of embedded minimal surfaces.

We obtain an estimate for the norm of the second fundamental form of stable H-surfaces in Riemannian 3-manifolds with bounded sectional curvature. Our estimate depends on the distance to the boundary of the surface and on the bound on the sectional curvature but not on the manifold itself. We give some applications, in particular we obtain an interior gradient estimate for H-sections in Killing submersions.