Related papers: Area minimizing surfaces in homotopy classes in me…

We give an alternative argument for the classification of real bundle pairs over smooth symmetric surfaces and extend this classification to nodal symmetric surfaces. We also classify the homotopy classes of automorphisms of real bundle…

We prove affirmatively the conjecture raised by J. Mostovoy; the space of short ropes is weakly homotopy equivalent to the classifying space of the topological monoid (or category) of long knots in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We make use of techniques…

In the present note we describe geometrically the homology classes in the total space of a surface bundle over a surface in terms of the holonomy map. We treat the cases where the base surface is closed or has one boundary component. We…

For a closed symplectic manifold $(M,\omega)$ with compatible Riemannian metric $g$ we study the Sobolev $H^1$ geometry of the group of all $H^s$ diffeomorphisms on $M$ which preserve the symplectic structure. We show that, for sufficiently…

In this survey paper, we give a complete list of known results on the first and the second homology groups of surface mapping class groups. Some known results on higher (co)homology are also mentioned.

We study geometric variational problems for a class of nonlinear sigma-models in quantum field theory. Mathematically, one needs to minimize an energy functional on homotopy classes of maps from closed 3-manifolds into compact homogeneous…

Let G be a k-step Carnot group. We prove an isoperimetric-type inequality for compact C^2-smooth immersed hypersurfaces with boundary, involving the horizontal mean curvature of the hypersurface. This generalizes an inequality due to…

Spaces of holomorphic maps from the Riemann sphere to various complex manifolds (holomorphic curves ) have played an important role in several area of mathematics. In a seminal paper G. Segal investigated the homotopy type of holomorphic…

We define the notion of a hierarchically cocompact classifying space for a family of subgroups of a group. Our main application is to show that the mapping class group $\mbox{Mod}(S)$ of any connected oriented compact surface $S$, possibly…

We investigate one-point reduction methods of finite topological spaces. These methods allow one to study homotopy theory of cell complexes by means of elementary moves of their finite models. We also introduce the notion of h-regular…

This paper is devoted to the study of mappings in metric spaces. We investigate mappings satisfying inverse moduli inequalities. We show that under certain conditions on these mappings, their definition domains and the spaces in which they…

We study minimal surfaces in generic sub-Riemannian manifolds with sub-Riemannian structures of co-rank one. These surfaces can be defined as the critical points of the so-called {\it horizontal} area functional associated to the canonical…

We prove a version of Gromov's compactness theorem for pseudo-holomorphic curves which holds locally in the target symplectic manifold. This result applies to sequences of curves with an unbounded number of free boundary components, and in…

Sobolev spaces are a natural framework for the analysis of problems in partial differential equations and calculus of variations. Some physical and geometric contexts, such as liquid crystals models and harmonic maps, lead to consider…

We show that for any closed surface of genus greater than one and for any finite weighted graph filling the surface, there exists a hyperbolic metric which realizes the least Dirichlet energy harmonic embedding of the graph among a fixed…

We consider the inclusion of the space of algebraic (regular) maps between real algebraic varieties in the space of all continuous maps. For a certain class of real algebraic varieties, which include real projective spaces, it is well known…

We study properties of Sobolev-type metrics on the space of immersed plane curves. We show that the geodesic equation for Sobolev-type metrics with constant coefficients of order 2 and higher is globally well-posed for smooth initial data…

We prove that every 1-Lipschitz map from a closed metric surface onto a closed Riemannian surface that has the same area is an isometry. If we replace the target space with a non-smooth surface, then the statement is not true and we study…

We use variational arguments to introduce a notion of mean curvature for surfaces in the Heisenberg group H^1 endowed with its Carnot-Carath\'eodory distance. By analyzing the first variation of area, we characterize C^2 stationary surfaces…

In this paper we consider a generalization of the Faddeev model for the maps from a closed three-manifold into the two-sphere. We give a novel representation of smooth $ S^2$-valued maps based on flat connections. This representation allows…