In this article we first show that any finite cover of the moduli space of closed Riemann surfaces of genus $g$ with $g\geq 2$ does not admit any Riemannian metric $ds^2$ of nonnegative scalar curvature such that $ds^2 \succ ||\cdot||_{T}$ where $||\cdot||_T$ is the Teichm\"uller metric. Our second result is the proof that any cover $M$ of the moduli space $\mathbb{M}_{g}$ of a closed Riemann surface $S_{g}$ does not admit any complete Riemannian metric of uniformly positive scalar curvature in the quasi-isometry class of the Teichm\"uller metric, which implies a conjecture of Farb-Weinberger in \cite{Farb-prob}.

A classification of $\SLn$ contravariant, continuous function-valued valuations on convex bodies is established. Such valuations are natural extensions of $\SLn$ contravariant $L_p$ Minkowski valuations, the classification of which characterized $L_p$ projection bodies, which are fundamental in the $L_p$ Brunn-Minkowski theory, for $p \geq 1$. Hence our result will help to better understand extensions of the $L_p$ Brunn-Minkowski theory. In fact, our results characterize general projection functions which extend $L_p$ projection functions ($p$-th powers of the support functions of $L_p$ projection bodies) to projection functions in the $L_p$ Brunn-Minkowski theory for $0< p < 1$ and in the Orlicz Brunn-Minkowski theory.

Fix a number $g>1$, let $S$ be a close surface of genus $g$ and $\Teich(S)$ be the Teichm\"uller space of $S$ endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. In this paper we show that the Riemannian sectional curvature operator of $\Teich(S)$ is non-positive definite. As an application we show that any twist harmonic map from rank-one hyperbolic spaces $H_{Q,m}=Sp(m,1)/Sp(m)\cdot Sp(1)$ or $H_{O,2}=F_{4}^{-20}/SO(9)$ into $\Teich(S)$ is a constant.

Various aspects of warped conformal field theories (WCFTs) are studied including entanglement entropy on excited states, the Renyi entropy after a local quench, and out-of-time-order four-point functions. Assuming a large central charge and dominance of the vacuum block in the conformal block expansion, (i) we calculate the single-interval entanglement entropy on an excited state, matching previous finite temperature results by changing the ensemble; and (ii) we show that WCFTs are maximally chaotic, a result that is compatible with the existence of black holes in the holographic duals. Finally, we relax the aforementioned assumptions and study the time evolution of the Renyi entropy after a local quench. We find that the change in the Renyi entropy is topological, vanishing at early and late times, and nonvanishing in between only for charged states in spectrally-flowed WCFTs.

We study a toy model of the Kerr/CFT correspondence using string theory on AdS_3 × S^3. We propose a single trace irrelevant deformation of the dual CFT generated by a vertex operator with spacetime dimensions (2,1). This operator shares the same quantum numbers as the integrable T\bar{J} deformation of two-dimensional CFTs where \bar{J} is a chiral U(1) current. We show that the deformation is marginal on the worldsheet and that the target spacetime is deformed to null warped AdS_3 upon dimensional reduction. We also calculate the spectrum of the deformed theory on the cylinder and compare it to the field theory analysis of T\bar{J}-deformed CFTs.