In this paper we prove that given a point p ∈ Mn, where Mn is a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension n, the length of a shortest geodesic loop lp(Mn) at this point is bounded above by 2nd, where d is the diameter of Mn. Moreover, we show that on a closed simply connected Riemannian manifold Mn with a nontrivial second homotopy group there either exist at least three geodesic loops of length less than or equal to 2d at each point of Mn, or the length of a shortest closed geodesic on Mn is bounded from above by 4d.

Let X → B be a proper flat morphism between smooth quasiprojective varieties of relative dimension n, and L → X a line bundle which is ample on the fibers. We establish formulas for the first two terms in the Knudsen-Mumford expansion for det(πLk) in terms of Deligne pairings of L and the relative canonical bundle K. This generalizes the theorem of Deligne [1], which holds for families of relative dimension one. As a corollary, we show that when X is smooth, the line bundle η associated to X → B, which was introduced in Phong-Sturm [12], coincides with the CM bundle defined by Paul-Tian [10, 11]. In a second and third corollaries, we establish asymptotics for the K-energy along Bergman rays generalizing the formulas obtained in [11].

In this note the fractional analytic index, for a projective elliptic operator associated to an Azumaya bundle, of [5] is related to the equivariant index of [1, 6] for an associated transversally elliptic operator.

Given a hyperbolic 3–manifold with torus boundary, we bound the change in volume under a Dehn filling where all slopes have length at least 2π. This result is applied to give explicit diagrammatic bounds on the volumes of many knots and links, as well as their Dehn fillings and branched covers. Finally, we use this result to bound the volumes of knots in terms of the coefficients of their Jones polynomials.

The purpose of this paper is to solve a problem posed by Strominger in constructing smooth models of superstring theory with flux. These are given by non-K¨ahler manifolds with torsion