We study the degeneration and the gluing of Kuranishi structures in Gromov-Witten theory under a symplectic cut. This leads us to a degeneration axiom and a gluing axiom for open Gromov-Witten invariants. They provide then a route to the construction of virtual fundamental chains via specialization. Comments on the equivalence of the degeneration formula of closed Gromov-Witten invariants by Li-Ruan/Li versus Ionel-Parker are given in the Appendix.

Brain Cortical surface registration is required for inter-subject studies of functional and anatomical data. Harmonic mapping has been applied for brain mapping, due to its existence, uniqueness, regularity and numerical stability. In order to improve the registration accuracy, sculcal landmarks are usually used as constraints for brain registration. Unfortunately, constrained harmonic mappings may not be diffeomorphic and produces invalid registration. This work conquer this problem by changing the Riemannian metric on the target cortical surface to a hyperbolic metric, so that the harmonic mapping is guaranteed to be a diffeomorphism while the landmark constraints are enforced as boundary matching condition. The computational algorithms are based on the Ricci flow method and hyperbolic heat diffusion. Experimental results demonstrate that, by changing the Riemannian metric, the registrations are

In this follow-up of our earlier two works D (11.1)(arXiv: 1406.0929 [math. DG]) and D (11.2)(arXiv: 1412.0771 [hep-th]) in the D-project, we study further the notion of adifferentiable map from an Azumaya/matrix manifold to a real manifold'. A conjecture is made that the notion of differentiable maps from Azumaya/matrix manifolds as defined in D (11.1) is equivalent to one defined through the contravariant ring-homomorphisms alone. A proof of this conjecture for the smooth (ie C^{\infty} ) case is given in this note. Thus, at least in the smooth case, our setting for D-branes in the realm of differential geometry is completely parallel to that in the realm of algebraic geometry, cf.\arXiv: 0709.1515 [math. AG] and arXiv: 0809.2121 [math. AG]. A related conjecture on such maps to C^{\infty} , as a C^{\infty} -manifold, and its proof in the C^{\infty} case is also given. As a by-product, a conjecture on a division lemma in the finitely differentiable case that generalizes the division lemma in the smooth case from Malgrange is given in the end, as well as other comments on the conjectures in the general C^{\infty} case. We remark that there are similar conjectures in general and theorems in the smooth case for the fermionic/super generalization of the notion.

We prove a homology vanishing theorem for graphs with positive Bakry-\'Emery curvature, analogous to a classic result of Bochner on manifolds\cite {Bochner}. Specifically, we prove that if a graph has positive curvature at every vertex, then its first homology group is trivial, where the notion of homology that we use for graphs is the path homology developed by Grigor'yan, Lin, Muranov, and Yau\cite {Grigoryan2}.%\Hm {added the fundamental group curvature relation} We moreover prove that the fundamental group is finite for graphs with positive Bakry-\'Emery curvature, analogous to a classic result of Myers on manifolds\cite {Myers1941}. The proofs draw on several separate areas of graph theory. We study graph coverings, gain graphs, and cycle spaces of graphs, in addition to the Bakry-\'Emery curvature and the path homology. The main results follow as a consequence of several different relationships developed among these different areas. Specifically, we show that a graph with positive curvature can have no non-trivial infinite cover preserving 3-cycles and 4-cycles, and give a combinatorial interpretation of the first path homology in terms of the cycle space of a graph. We relate cycle spaces of graphs to gain graphs with abelian gain group, and relate these to coverings of graphs. Along the way, we prove other new facts about gain graphs, coverings, and cycles spaces that are of related interest. Furthermore, we relate gain graphs to graph homotopy and the fundamental group developed by Grigor'yan, Lin, Muranov, and Yau\cite {Grigoryan_homotopy}, and obtain an alternative proof to their result that the abelianization of the fundamental

We study various geometrical quantities for CalabiYau varieties realized as cones over Gorenstein Fano varieties, obtained as toric varieties from reflexive polytopes in various dimensions. Focus is made on reflexive polytopes up to dimension 4 and the minimized volumes of the SasakiEinstein base of the corresponding CalabiYau cone are calculated. By doing so, we conjecture new bounds for the SasakiEinstein volume with respect to various topological quantities of the corresponding toric varieties. We give interpretations about these volume bounds in the context of associated field theories via the AdS/CFT correspondence.