Related papers: The Geometry of Loop Spaces II: Characteristic Cla…

Based on the combinatorial description of the moduli spaces of curves provided by Strebel differentials, Witten and Kontsevich have introduced combinatorial cohomology classes $W_{(m_0,m_1,m_2,\dots),n}$, and conjectured that these can be…

In this paper, we give a quantum interpretation of the Bismut-Chern character form (the loop space lifting of the Chern character form) as well as the Chern character form associated to a complex vector bundle with connection over a smooth…

A symplectic manifold $W$ with contact type boundary $M = \partial W$ induces a linearization of the contact homology of $M$ with corresponding linearized contact homology $HC(M)$. We establish a Gysin-type exact sequence in which the…

The loop space $L\mathbb{P}^n$ of the complex projective space $\mathbb{P}^n$ consisting of all $C^k$ or Sobolev $W^{k, \, p}$ maps $S^1 \to \mathbb{P}^n$ is an infinite dimensional complex manifold. We identify a class of holomorphic…

We develop the analysis of Lipschitz immersions of $n$-dimensional manifolds into $\mathbb{R}^d$ having their second fundamental forms bounded in the critical Sobolev space $W^{\frac{n}{2}-1,2}$ in dimension $n\geq 4$ even and any…

For a closed connected oriented manifold $M$ of dimension $2n$, it was proved by M\o ller and Raussen that the components of the mapping space from $M$ to $S^{2n}$ have exactly two different rational homotopy types. However, since this…

In this paper, we survey recent works on the structure of the mapping class groups of surfaces mainly from the point of view of topology. We then discuss several possible directions for future research. These include the relation between…

The bigerbes introduced here give a refinement of the notion of 2-gerbes, representing degree four integral cohomology classes of a space. Defined in terms of bisimplicial line bundles, bigerbes have a symmetry with respect to which they…

We construct characteristic classes of 4-manifold bundles using $SO(3)$-Yang-Mills theory and Seiberg-Witten theory for families.

We produce new cohomology for non-uniform arithmetic lattices $\Gamma<SO(p,q)$ using a technique of Millson--Raghunathan. From this, we obtain new characteristic classes of manifold bundles with fiber a closed $4k$-dimensional manifold $M$…

We discuss a class of 3-dimensional N=4 Chern-Simons (CS) quiver gauge models obtained from M-theory compactifications on singular complex 4-dimensional hyper-Kahler (HK) manifolds, which are realized explicitly as a cotangent bundle over…

Let G be a split, simple, simply connected, algebraic group over Q. The degree 4, weight 2 motivic cohomology group of the classifying space BG of G is identified with Z. We construct cocycles representing the generator of this group, known…

We present new circular Wilson loops in three-dimensional N=4 quiver Chern-Simons-matter theory on S^3. At any given node of the quiver, a two-parameter family of operators can be obtained by opportunely deforming the 1/4 BPS Gaiotto-Yin…

In this note we introduce the notion of a smooth structure on a conical pseudomanifold $M$ in terms of $C^\infty$-rings of smooth functions on $M$. For a finitely generated smooth structure $C^\infty (M)$ we introduce the notion of the Nash…

We give a new lower bound on the number of connected components of the space of representations of a surface group into the group of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of the circle. Precisely, for the fundamental group of a genus g…

Let $M$ be the moduli space of rank 3 parabolic vector bundles over a Riemann surface with several punctures. By the Mehta-Seshadri correspondence, this is the space of rank 3 unitary representations of the fundamental group of the…

Characteristic class relations in Dolbeault cohomology follow from the existence of a holomorphic Cartan geometry (for example, a holomorphic conformal structure or a holomorphic projective connection). These relations can be calculated…

We show that mapping class groups associated to all types of real algebraic curves are virtual duality groups. We also deduce some results about the orbifold homotopy groups of the moduli spaces of real algebraic curves. We achieve these…

In this article we investigate Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch formulae for line bundles on irreducible symplectic K\"ahler manifolds. As Huybrechts has shown, for every irreducible complex K\"ahler manifold $X$ of dimension $2n$, there are numbers…

Starting from a Riemannian conformal structure on a manifold M, we provide a method to construct a family of Lorentzian manifolds. The construction relies on the choice of a metric in the conformal class and a smooth 1-parameter family of…