We give a description of the completion of the manifold of all smooth Riemannian metrics on a fixed smooth, closed, finitedimensional, orientable manifold with respect to a natural metric called the L2 metric. The primary motivation for studying this problem comes from Teichm¨uller theory, where similar considerations lead to a completion of the well-known Weil-Petersson metric. We give an application of the main theorem to the completions of Teichm¨uller space with respect to a class of metrics that generalize the Weil-Petersson metric.

The challenge of identifying symmetry-protected topological states (SPTs) is due to their lack of symmetry-breaking order parameters and intrinsic topological orders. For this reason, it is impossible to formulate SPTs under Ginzburg-Landau theory or probe SPTs via fractionalized bulk excitations and topology-dependent ground state degeneracy. However, the partition functions from path integrals with various symmetry twists are the universal SPT invariants defining topological probe responses, fully characterizing SPTs. In this work, we use gauge fields to represent those symmetry twists in closed spacetimes of any dimensionality and arbitrary topology. This allows us to express the SPT invariants in terms of continuum field theory. We show that SPT invariants of pure gauge actions describe the SPTs predicted by group cohomology, while the mixed gauge-gravity actions describe the beyond-group-cohomology SPTs, recently observed by Kapustin. We find new examples of mixed gauge-gravity actions for U(1) SPTs in 4+1D via mixing the gauge first Chern class with a gravitational Chern-Simons term, or viewed as a 5+1D Wess-Zumino-Witten term with a Pontryagin class. We rule out U(1) SPTs in 3+1D mixed with a Stiefel-Whitney class. We also apply our approach to the bosonic/fermionic topological insulators protected by U(1) charge and Z_2^T time-reversal symmetries whose pure gauge action is the axion θ-term. Field theory representations of SPT invariants not only serve as tools for classifying SPTs, but also guide us in designing physical probes for them. In addition, our field theory representations are independently powerful for studying group cohomology within the mathematical context.

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We consider Hermitian random band matrices $H=(h_{xy})$ on the $d$-dimensional lattice $(\Z/L\Z)^d$. The entries $h_{xy}$ are independent (up to Hermitian conditions) centered complex Gaussian random variables with variances $s_{xy}=\mathbb E|h_{xy}|^2$. The variance matrix $S=(s_{xy})$ has a banded structure so that $s_{xy}$ is negligible if $|x-y|$ exceeds the band width $W$. In dimensions $d\ge 8$, we prove that, as long as $W\ge L^\e$ for a small constant $\e>0$, with high probability most bulk eigenvectors of $H$ are delocalized in the sense that their localization lengths are comparable to $L$. Denote by $G(z)=(H-z)^{-1}$ the Green's function of $H$. For $\im z\gg W^2/L^2$, we also prove a widely used criterion in physics for quantum diffusion of this model, namely, the leading term in the Fourier transform of $\E|G_{xy}(z)|^2$ with respect to $x-y$ is of the form $(\im z + a(p))^{-1}$ for some $a(p)$ quadratic in $p$, where $p$ is the Fourier variable. Our method is based on an expansion of $T_{xy}=|m|^2 \sum_{\alpha}s_{x\alpha}|G_{\alpha y}|^2$ and it requires a self-energy renormalization up to error $W^{-K}$ for any large constant $K$ independent of $W$ and $L$. We expect that this method can be extended to non-Gaussian band matrices.

We develop a Floer theoretical gluing technique and apply it to deal with the most generic singular ber in the SYZ program, namely the product of a torus with the immersed two-sphere with a single nodal self-intersection. As an application, we construct immersed Lagrangians in Gr(2;Cn) and OG(1;C5) and derive their SYZ mirrors. It recovers the Lie theoretical mirrors constructed by Rietsch. It also gives an eective way to compute stable disks (with non-trivial obstructions) bounded by immersed Lagrangians.