AUTOMORPHIC LEFSCHETZ PROPERTIES FOR NONCOMPACT ARITHMETIC MANIFOLDS

We prove the injectivity of Oda-type restriction maps for the cohomology of noncompact congruence quotients of symmetric spaces. This includes results for restriction between (1) congruence real hyperbolic manifolds, (2) congruence complex hyperbolic manifolds, and (3) orthogonal Shimura varieties. These results generalize results for compact congruence quotients by Bergeron and Clozel [Quelques conséquences des travaux d’Arthur pour le spectre et la topologie des variétés hyperboliques, Invent. Math.192 (2013), 505–532] and Venkataramana [Cohomology of compact locally symmetric spaces, Compos. Math.125 (2001), 221–253]. The proofs combine techniques of mixed Hodge theory and methods involving automorphic forms.

Moduli space holography and the finiteness of flux vacua

A holographic perspective to study and characterize field spaces that arise in string compactifications is suggested. A concrete correspondence is developed by studying two-dimensional moduli spaces in supersymmetric string compactifications. It is proposed that there exist theories on the boundaries of each moduli space, whose crucial data are given by a Hilbert space, an Sl(2, ℂ)-algebra, and two special operators. This boundary data is motivated by asymptotic Hodge theory and the fact that the physical metric on the moduli space of Calabi-Yau manifolds asymptotes near any infinite distance boundary to a Poincaré metric with Sl(2, ℝ) isometry. The crucial part of the bulk theory on the moduli space is a sigma model for group-valued matter fields. It is discussed how this might be coupled to a two-dimensional gravity theory. The classical bulk-boundary matching is then given by the proof of the famous Sl(2) orbit theorem of Hodge theory, which is reformulated in a more physical language. Applying this correspondence to the flux landscape in Calabi-Yau fourfold compactifications it is shown that there are no infinite tails of self-dual flux vacua near any co-dimension one boundary. This finiteness result is a consequence of the constraints on the near boundary expansion of the bulk solutions that match to the boundary data. It is also pointed out that there is a striking connection of the finiteness result for supersymmetric flux vacua and the Hodge conjecture.

Positivity of vector bundles and Hodge theory

Differential geometry, especially the use of curvature, plays a central role in modern Hodge theory. The vector bundles that occur in the theory (Hodge bundles) have metrics given by the polarizations of the Hodge structures, and the sign and singularity properties of the resulting curvatures have far reaching implications in the geometry of families of algebraic varieties. A special property of the curvatures is that they are [Formula: see text] order invariants expressed in terms of the norms of algebro-geometric bundle mappings. This partly expository paper will explain some of the positivity and singularity properties of the curvature invariants that arise in the Hodge theory with special emphasis on the norm property.