The equations of flux compactifications of Type IIA superstrings were written down by Tomasiello and Tseng-Yau. To study these equations, we introduce a natural geometric flow on symplectic Calabi-Yau 6-manifolds. We prove the wellposedness of this flow and establish the basic estimates. We show that the Type IIA flow can be applied to find optimal almost complex structures on certain symplectic manifolds. It can also be used to prove a stability result about Kahler structures. This is based on joint work with Phong, Picard and Zhang.

The Hardy-Littlewood generalised twin prime conjecture states an asymptotic formula for the number of primes $p\le X$ such that $p+h$ is prime for any non-zero even integer $h$. While this conjecture remains wide open, Matom\"{a}ki, Radziwi{\l}{\l} and Tao proved that it holds on average over $h$, improving on a previous result of Mikawa. In this talk we will discuss an almost prime analogue of the Hardy-Littlewood conjecture for which we can go beyond what is known for primes. We will describe some recent work in which we prove an asymptotic formula for the number of almost primes $n=p_1p_2 \le X$ such that $n+h$ has exactly two prime factors which holds for a very short average over $h$.

We present simple, physically motivated, examples where small geometric changes on a two-dimensional graph , combined with high disorder, have a significant impact on the spectral and dynamical properties of the random Schr\"odinger operator  obtained by adding a random potential to the graph's adjacency operator. Differently from the standard Anderson model, the random potential will be constant along any vertical line, hence the models exhibit long range correlations. Moreover, one of the models presented here is a natural example where the transient and recurrent components of the absolutely continuous spectrum, introduced by Avron and Simon, coexist and allow us to capture a sharp phase transition present in the model. Joint work with Matos and Schenker