We'll discuss a new technique for relating scalar curvature bounds to the global structure of 3-dimensional manifolds, exploiting a relationship between the scalar curvature and the topology of level sets of harmonic functions. We will describe several geometric applications in both the compact and asymptotically flat settings, including a simple and effective new proof (joint with Bray, Kazaras, and Khuri) of the three-dimensional Riemannian positive mass theorem.

In joint work with F. Bonsante and A. Seppi, we solve a
Dirichlet-type problem for entire constant mean curvature hypersurfaces in
Minkowski n+1-space, proving that such surfaces are essentially in bijection
with lower semicontinuous functions on the n-1-sphere. This builds off of
existence theorems by Treibergs and Choi-Treibergs, which themselves rely on
the foundational work of Cheng and Yau. I'll present their maximum principle
argument as well the extra tool that leads to our complete existence and
uniqueness theorem. Time permitting, I'll compare with the analogous problem
of constant Gaussian curvature and present a new result on their intrinsic
geometry.

Conference website: https://www.math.uci.edu/scgas

Please register at the conference website if planning to attend.

In this talk, we will present some recent study about the index
problem of longitudinal elliptic operators on open foliated manifolds. As
the operators under consideration are not elliptic on the whole (not
necessarily closed) manifold, they in general fail to be Fredholm. We will
introduce some operator algebra tools to study the index of such operators.
As an application, we will present a Lichnerowicz type vanishing result for
foliations on open manifolds.

Let (X,L) be a polarized manifold. Assume that the automorphism group is finite. If the height discrepancy of (X,L) is O(d^2) then (X,L) admits a csck metric in the first chern class of L if and only if (X,L) is asymptotically stable.