The classical Morse theory proceeds by considering sublevel sets f^{−1}(−∞,a] of a Morse function f:M→R, where M is a smooth finite-dimensional manifold. In this paper, we study the topology of the level sets f^{−1}(a) and give conditions under which the topology of f^{−1}(a) changes when passing a critical value. We show that for a general class of functions, which includes all exhaustive Morse functions, the topology of a regular level f^{−1}(a) always changes when passing a single critical point, unless the index of the critical point is half the dimension of the manifold M. When f is a natural Hamiltonian on a cotangent bundle, we obtain more precise results in terms of the topology of the base space. (Counter-)examples and applications to celestial mechanics are also discussed.

Let ψ be a conformal map on D with ψ(0)=0 and let F_α={z∈D:|ψ(z)|=α} for α>0. Denote by H^p(D) the classical Hardy space with exponent p>0 and by h(ψ) the Hardy number of ψ. Consider the limits L:=lim_{α→+∞} (log ω_D(0,Fα)^{−1} / logα), μ:=lim_{α→+∞}(d_D(0,Fα) / logα), where ω_D(0,Fα) denotes the harmonic measure at 0 of F_α and d_D(0,Fα) denotes the hyperbolic distance between 0 and F_α in D. We study a problem posed by P. Poggi-Corradini. What is the relation between L, μ and h(ψ)? Motivated by the result of Kim and Sugawa that h(ψ)=lim inf_{α→+∞} (log ω_D(0,Fα)^{−1} logα), we show that h(ψ)=lim inf_{α→+∞} (d_D(0,Fα) / logα). We also provide conditions for the existence of L and μ and for the equalities L=μ=h(ψ). Poggi-Corradini proved that ψ∉H^μ(D) for a wide class of conformal maps ψ. We present an example of ψ such that ψ∈H^μ(D).

Let g be the Witt algebra or the positive Witt algebra. It is well known that the enveloping algebra U(g) has intermediate growth and thus infinite Gelfand–Kirillov (GK-) dimension. We prove that the GK-dimension of U(g) is just infinite in the sense that any proper quotient of U(g) has polynomial growth. This proves a conjecture of Petukhov and the second named author for the positive Witt algebra. We also establish the corresponding results for quotients of the symmetric algebra S(g) by proper Poisson ideals. In fact, we prove more generally that any central quotient of the universal enveloping algebra of the Virasoro algebra has just infinite GK-dimension. We give several applications. In particular, we easily compute the annihilators of Verma modules over the Virasoro algebra.

We discuss the Kodaira problem for uniruled Kähler spaces. Building on a construction due to Voisin, we give an example of a uniruled Kähler space X such that every run of the K_X-MMP immediately terminates with a Mori fibre space, yet X does not admit an algebraic approximation. Our example also shows that for a Mori fibration, approximability of the base does not imply approximability of the total space.

We introduce the so-called doubling metric on the collection of non-empty bounded open subsets of a metric space. Given an open subset U of a metric space X, the predecessor U_∗ of U is defined by doubling the radii of all open balls contained inside U, and taking their union. The predecessor of U is an open set containing U. The directed doubling distance between U and another subset V is the number of times that the predecessor operation needs to be applied to U to obtain a set that contains V. Finally, the doubling distance between open sets U and V is the maximum of the directed distance between U and V and the directed distance between V and U.