We show that the pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of contact 3-manifolds which are symplectically cobordant to something overtwisted, or to the tight 3-sphere, or which admit symplectic caps containing symplectically embedded spheres with vanishing self-intersection. These constructions imply new and simplified proofs of several recent results involving fillability, planarity, and non-separating contact type embeddings. The cobordisms are built from symplectic handles of the form Σ × D and Σ × [−1, 1] × S1, which have symplectic cores and can be attached to contact 3-manifolds along sufficiently large neighborhoods of transverse links and preLagrangian tori. We also sketch a construction of J-holomorphic foliations in these cobordisms and formulate a conjecture regarding maps induced on Embedded Contact Homology with twisted coefficients.

In this paper we study the analytic torsion and the L2-torsion of compact locally symmetric manifolds. We consider the analytic torsion with respect to representations of the fundamental group which are obtained by restriction of irreducible representations of the group of isometries of the underlying symmetric space. The main purpose is to study the asymptotic behavior of the analytic torsion with respect to sequences of representations associated to rays of highest weights.

The entropy of a hypersurface is a geometric invariant that measures complexity and is invariant under rigid motions and dilations. It is given by the supremum over all Gaussian integrals with varying centers and scales. It is monotone under mean curvature flow, thus giving a Lyapunov functional. Therefore, the entropy of the initial hypersurface bounds the entropy at all future singularities. We show here that not only does the round sphere have the lowest entropy of any closed singularity, but there is a gap to the second lowest.