The marked length spectrum (MLS) of a closed negatively curved manifold $(M, g)$ is known to determine the metric g under various circumstances. We show that, in these cases, (approximate) values of the MLS on a sufficiently large finite set approximately determine the metric. Our approach is to recover the hypotheses of our main theorems in Butt [Quantative marked length spectrum rigidity. Preprint, 2022], namely, multiplicative closeness of the MLS functions on the entire set of closed geodesics of M. We use mainly dynamical tools and arguments, but take great care to show that the constants involved depend only on concrete geometric information about the given Riemannian metrics, such as the dimension, diameter and sectional curvature bounds.

We study Kähler-Einstein metrics on singular projective varieties. We show that under an approximation property with constant scalar curvature metrics, the metric completion of the smooth part is a noncollapsed RCD space, and is homeomorphic to the original variety.

In this paper, we provide a characterization for a class of convex curves on the 3-sphere. More precisely, using a theorem that represents a locally convex curve on the 3-sphere as a pair of curves in $\mathbb S^2$, one of which is locally convexand the other is an immersion, we are able of completely characterizing a class of convex curves on the 3-sphere.

We study the moduli space of constant scalar curvature Kähler (cscK) surfaces around toric surfaces. To this end, we introduce the class of foldable surfaces: smooth toric surfaces whose lattice automorphism group contains a non-trivial cyclic subgroup. We classify such surfaces and show that they all admit a cscK metric. We then study the moduli space of polarised cscK surfaces around a point given by a foldable surface, and show that it is locally modelled on a finite quotient of a toric affine variety with terminal singularities.

Locally harmonic manifolds are Riemannian manifolds in which small geodesic spheres are isoparametric hypersurfaces, i.e., hypersurfaces whose nearby parallel hypersurfaces are of constant mean curvature. Flat and rank one symmetric spaces are examples of harmonic manifolds. Damek–Ricci spaces are non-compact harmonic manifolds, most of which are non-symmetric. Taking the limit of an ‘inflating’ sphere through a point p in a Damek–Ricci space as the center of the sphere runs out to infinity along a geodesic half-line $\gamma $ starting from p, we get a horosphere. Similarly to spheres, horospheres are also isoparametric hypersurfaces. In this paper, we define the sphere-like hypersurfaces obtained by ‘overinflating the horospheres’ by pushing the center of the sphere beyond the point at infinity of $\gamma $ along a virtual prolongation of $\gamma $. They give a new family of isoparametric hypersurfaces in Damek–Ricci spaces connecting geodesic spheres to some of the isoparametric hypersurfaces constructed by J. C. Díaz-Ramos and M. Domínguez-Vázquez [17] in Damek–Ricci spaces. We study the geometric properties of these isoparametric hypersurfaces, in particular their homogeneity and the totally geodesic condition for their focal varieties.

We study the K-stability of blow-ups of the weighted projective plane ${\mathbb P}(1,1,n)$, where n is a positive integer.

We prove that the proximal unit normal bundle of the subgraph of a $W^{2,n} $-function carries a natural structure of Legendrian cycle. This result is used to obtain an Alexandrov-type sphere theorem for hypersurfaces in $ \mathbf{R}^{n+1} $, which are locally graphs of arbitrary $W^{2,n} $-functions. We also extend the classical umbilicality theorem to $ W^{2,1} $-graphs, under the Lusin (N) condition for the graph map.

Given a simply connected manifold M, we completely determine which rational monomial Pontryagin numbers are attained by fiber homotopy trivial M-bundles over the k-sphere, provided that k is small compared to the dimension and the connectivity of M. Furthermore, we study the vector space of rational cobordism classes represented by such bundles. We give upper and lower bounds on its dimension, and we construct manifolds for which the lower bound is attained. Our proofs are based on the classical approach to studying diffeomorphism groups via block bundles and surgery theory, and we make use of ideas developed by Krannich–Kupers–Randal-Williams.

As an application, we show the existence of elements of infinite order in the homotopy groups of the spaces of positive Ricci and positive sectional curvature, provided that M is $\operatorname {Spin}$, has a nontrivial rational Pontryagin class and admits such a metric. This is done by constructing M-bundles over spheres with nonvanishing ${\hat {\mathcal {A}}}$-genus. Furthermore, we give a vanishing theorem for generalized Morita–Miller–Mumford classes for fiber homotopy trivial bundles over spheres.

In the appendix coauthored by Jens Reinhold, we investigate which classes of the rational oriented cobordism ring contain an element that fibers over a sphere of a given dimension.

We study the geometry induced on the local orbit spaces of Killing vector fields on (Riemannian) $G$-manifolds, with an emphasis on the cases $G=\textrm {Spin}(7)$ and $G=G_2$. Along the way, we classify the harmonic morphisms with one-dimensional fibres from $G_2$-manifolds to Einstein manifolds.

We establish a one-to-one correspondence between Kähler metrics in a given conformal class and parallel sections of a certain vector bundle with conformally invariant connection, where the parallel sections satisfy a set of non-linear algebraic constraints that we describe. The vector bundle captures 2-form prolongations and is isomorphic to $\Lambda^3(\mathcal{T})$, where ${\mathcal{T}}$ is the tractor bundle of conformal geometry, but the resulting connection differs from the normal tractor connection by curvature terms.

Our analysis leads to a set of obstructions for a Riemannian metric to be conformal to a Kähler metric. In particular, we find an explicit algebraic condition for a Weyl tensor which must hold if there exists a conformal Killing–Yano tensor, which is a necessary condition for a metric to be conformal to Kähler. This gives an invariant characterization of algebraically special Riemannian metrics of type D in dimensions higher than four.

The 3-dimensional Heisenberg group can be equipped with three different types of left-invariant Lorentzian metric, according to whether the center of the Lie algebra is spacelike, timelike or null. Using the second of these types, we study spacelike surfaces of mean curvature zero. These surfaces with singularities are associated with harmonic maps into the 2-sphere. We show that the generic singularities are cuspidal edge, swallowtail and cuspidal cross-cap. We also give the loop group construction for these surfaces, and the criteria on the loop group potentials for the different generic singularities. Lastly, we solve the Cauchy problem for harmonic maps into the 2-sphere using loop groups, and use this to give a geometric characterisation of the singularities. We use these results to prove that a regular spacelike maximal disc with null boundary must have at least two cuspidal cross-cap singularities on the boundary.

We investigate the Lorentzian analogues of Riemannian Bianchi–Cartan–Vranceanu spaces. We provide their general description and emphasize their role in the classification of three-dimensional homogeneous Lorentzian manifolds with a four-dimensional isometry group. We then illustrate their geometric properties (with particular regard to curvature, Killing vector fields and their description as Lorentzian Lie groups) and we study several relevant classes of surfaces (parallel, totally umbilical, minimal, constant mean curvature) in these homogeneous Lorentzian three-manifolds.

We discuss the Singer conjecture and Gromov–Lück inequality $\chi\geq |\sigma|$ for aspherical complex surfaces. We give a proof of the Singer conjecture for aspherical complex surfaces with residually finite fundamental group that does not rely on Gromov’s Kähler groups theory. Without the residually finiteness assumption, we observe that this conjecture can be proven for all aspherical complex surfaces except possibly those in Class $\mathrm{VII}_0^+$ (a positive answer to the global spherical shell conjecture would rule out the existence of aspherical surfaces in this class). We also sharpen the Gromov-Lück inequality for aspherical complex surfaces that are not in Class $\mathrm{VII}_0^+$. This is achieved by connecting the circle of ideas of the Singer conjecture with the study of Reid’s conjecture.

Special Ricci–Hessian equations on Kähler manifolds $(M,g)$, as defined by Maschler [‘Special Kähler–Ricci potentials and Ricci solitons’, Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 34 (2008), 367–380], involve functions $\tau $ on M and state that, for some function $\alpha $ of the real variable $\tau\kern-0.8pt $, the sum of $\alpha \nabla d\tau\kern-0.8pt $ and the Ricci tensor equals a functional multiple of the metric g, while $\alpha \nabla d\tau\kern-0.8pt $ itself is assumed to be nonzero almost everywhere. Three well-known obvious ‘standard’ cases are provided by (non-Einstein) gradient Kähler–Ricci solitons, conformally-Einstein Kähler metrics, and special Kähler–Ricci potentials. We show that, outside of these three cases, such an equation can only occur in complex dimension two and, at generic points, it must then represent one of three types, for which, up to normalizations, $\alpha =2\cot \tau\kern-0.8pt $, $\alpha =2\coth \tau\kern-0.8pt $, or $\alpha =2\tanh \tau\kern-0.8pt $. We also use the Cartan–Kähler theorem to prove that these three types are actually realized in a ‘nonstandard’ way.

Let M be a smooth closed oriented surface. Gaussian thermostats on M correspond to the geodesic flows arising from metric connections, including those with non-zero torsion. These flows may not preserve any absolutely continuous measure. We prove that if two Gaussian thermostats on M with negative thermostat curvature are related by a smooth orbit equivalence isotopic to the identity, then the two background metrics are conformally equivalent via a smooth diffeomorphism of M isotopic to the identity. We also give a relationship between the thermostat forms themselves. Finally, we prove the same result for Anosov magnetic flows.

We prove a strong Frankel theorem for mean curvature flow shrinkers in all dimensions: Any two shrinkers in a sufficiently large ball must intersect. In particular, the shrinker itself must be connected in all large balls. The key to the proof is a strong Bernstein theorem for incomplete stable Gaussian surfaces.

The aim of this paper is to establish the correspondence between the twisted localised Pestov identity on the unit tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold and the Weitzenböck identity for twisted symmetric tensors on the manifold.

In this paper, we investigate hypersurfaces of $\mathbb{S}^2\times \mathbb{S}^2$ and $\mathbb{H}^2\times \mathbb{H}^2$ with recurrent Ricci tensor. As the main result, we prove that a hypersurface in $\mathbb{S}^2\times \mathbb{S}^2$ (resp. $\mathbb{H}^2\times \mathbb{H}^2$) with recurrent Ricci tensor is either an open part of $\Gamma \times \mathbb{S}^2$ (resp. $\Gamma \times \mathbb{H}^2$) for a curve $\Gamma$ in $\mathbb{S}^2$ (resp. $\mathbb{H}^2$), or a hypersurface with constant sectional curvature. The latter has been classified by H. Li, L. Vrancken, X. Wang, and Z. Yao very recently.

We explore the regularity theory of optimal transport maps for costs satisfying a Ma–Trudinger–Wang condition, by viewing the graphs of the transport maps as maximal Lagrangian surfaces with respect to an appropriate pseudo-Riemannian metric on the product space. We recover the local regularity theory in two-dimensional manifolds.

We show that the fundamental groups of smooth $4$-manifolds that admit geometric decompositions in the sense of Thurston have asymptotic dimension at most four, and equal to four when aspherical. We also show that closed $3$-manifold groups have asymptotic dimension at most three. Our proof method yields that the asymptotic dimension of closed $3$-dimensional Alexandrov spaces is at most three. Thus, we obtain that the Novikov conjecture holds for closed $4$-manifolds with such a geometric decomposition and for closed $3$-dimensional Alexandrov spaces. Consequences of these results include a vanishing result for the Yamabe invariant of certain $0$-surgered geometric $4$-manifolds and the existence of zero in the spectrum of aspherical smooth $4$-manifolds with a geometric decomposition.