We undertake a systematic study of the infinitesimal geometry of the Thurston metric, showing that the topology, convex geometry and metric geometry of the tangent and cotangent spheres based at any marked hyperbolic surface representing a point in Teichmüller space can recover the marking and geometry of this marked surface. We then translate the results concerning the infinitesimal structures to global geometric statements for the Thurston metric, most notably deriving rigidity statements for the Thurston metric analogous to the celebrated Royden theorem.

Based on the work of Ringel and Green, one can define the (Drinfeld) double Ringel--Hall algebra ${\mathscr D}(Q)$ of a quiver $Q$ as well as its highest weight modules. The main purpose of the present paper is to show that the basic representation $L(\Lambda_0)$ of ${\mathscr D}(\Delta_n)$ of the cyclic quiver $\Delta_n$ provides a realization of the $q$-deformed Fock space $\bigwedge^\infty$ defined by Hayashi. This is worked out by extending a construction of Varagnolo and Vasserot. By analysing the structure of nilpotent representations of $\Delta_n$, we obtain a decomposition of the basic representation $L(\Lambda_0)$ which induces the Kashiwara--Miwa--Stern decomposition of $\bigwedge^\infty$ and a construction of the canonical basis of $\bigwedge^\infty$ defined by Leclerc and Thibon in terms of certain monomial basis elements in ${\mathscr D}(\Delta_n)$.

We consider two-dimensional critical bond percolation. Conditioned on the existence of an open circuit in an annulus, we show that the ratio of the expected size of the shortest open circuit to the expected size of the innermost circuit tends to zero as the side length of the annulus tends to infinity, the aspect ratio remaining fixed. The same proof yields a similar result for the lowest open crossing of a rectangle. In this last case, we answer a question of Kesten and Zhang by showing in addition that the ratio of the length of the shortest crossing to the length of the lowest tends to zero in probability. This suggests that the chemical distance in critical percolation is given by an exponent strictly smaller than that of the lowest path.

We explain how the classical notions of Fisher information of a random variable and Fisher information matrix of a random vector can be extended to a much broader setting. We also show that Stam’s inequality for Fisher information and Shannon entropy, as well as the more generalized versions proved earlier by the authors, are all special cases of more general sharp inequalities satisfied by random vectors. The extremal random vectors, which we call generalized Gaussians, contain Gaussians as a limiting case but are noteworthy because they are heavy- tailed.

The representation category of a conformal net is a unitary modular tensor category. We investigate the reconstruction program: whether all unitary modular tensor categories are representation categories of conformal nets. We give positive evidence: the fruitful theory of multi-interval Jones-Wassermann subfactors on conformal nets is also true for modular tensor categories. We construct multi-interval Jones-Wassermann subfactors for unitary modular tensor categories. We prove that these subfactors are symmetrically self-dual. It generalizes and categorifies the self-duality of finite abelian groups. We call this duality the modular self-duality, because the modularity of the modular tensor category appears in a crucial way. For each unitary modular tensor category, we obtain a sequence of unitary fusion categories. The cyclic group case gives examples of Tambara-Yamagami categories.