Bershadsky, Cecotti, Ooguri and Vafa constructed a real-valued invariant for Calabi–Yau manifolds, which is now called the BCOV invariant. In this paper, we extend the BCOV invariant to such pairs $(X,D)$, where $X$ is a compact Kähler manifold and $D$ is a pluricanonical divisor on $X$ with simple normal crossing support. We also study the behavior of the extended BCOV invariant under blow-ups. The results in this paper lead to a joint work with Fu proving that birational Calabi–Yau manifolds have the same BCOV invariant.

The mathematical physicists Bershadsky–Cecotti–Ooguri–Vafa (BCOV) proposed, in a seminal article from 1994, a conjecture extending genus zero mirror symmetry to higher genera. With a view towards a refined formulation of the Grothendieck–Riemann–Roch theorem, we offer a mathematical description of the BCOV conjecture at genus one. As an application of the arithmetic Riemann–Roch theorem of Gillet–Soulé and our previous results on the BCOV invariant, we establish this conjecture for Calabi–Yau hypersurfaces in projective spaces. Our contribution takes place on the B-side, and together with the work of Zinger on the A-side, it provides the first complete examples of the mirror symmetry program in higher dimensions. The case of quintic threefolds was studied by Fang–Lu–Yoshikawa. Our approach also lends itself to arithmetic considerations of the BCOV invariant, and we study a Chowla–Selberg type theorem expressing it in terms of special $\Gamma $ -values for certain Calabi–Yau manifolds with complex multiplication.

Yoshikawa in [Invent. Math. 156 (2004), 53–117] introduces a holomorphic torsion invariant of $K3$ surfaces with involution. In this paper we completely determine its structure as an automorphic function on the moduli space of such $K3$ surfaces. On every component of the moduli space, it is expressed as the product of an explicit Borcherds lift and a classical Siegel modular form. We also introduce its twisted version. We prove its modularity and a certain uniqueness of the modular form corresponding to the twisted holomorphic torsion invariant. This is used to study an equivariant analogue of Borcherds’ conjecture.

Using Roelcke’s formula for the Green function, we explicitly construct a basis in the kernel of the adjoint Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface $X$ and compute the $S$-matrix of $X$ at the zero value of the spectral parameter. We apply these results to study various self-adjoint extensions of a symmetric Laplacian on a compact polyhedral surface of genus two with a single conical point. It turns out that the behaviour of the $S$-matrix at the zero value of the spectral parameter is sensitive to the geometry of the polyhedron.

We find an explicit expression for the zeta-regularized determinant of (the Friedrichs extensions of) the Laplacians on a compact Riemann surface of genus one with conformal metric of curvature $1$ having a single conical singularity of angle $4\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$.

In [31] we defined a regularized analytic torsion for quotients of the symmetric space $\operatorname{SL}(n,\mathbb{R})/\operatorname{SO}(n)$ by arithmetic lattices. In this paper we study the limiting behavior of the analytic torsion as the lattices run through sequences of congruence subgroups of a fixed arithmetic subgroup. Our main result states that for principal congruence subgroups and strongly acyclic flat bundles, the logarithm of the analytic torsion, divided by the index of the subgroup, converges to the $L^{2}$-analytic torsion.

We use Toeplitz operators to evaluate the leading term in the asymptotics of the analytic torsion forms associated with a family of flat vector bundles $F_{p}$ . For $p\in \mathbf{N}$ , the flat vector bundle $F_{p}$ is the direct image of $L^{p}$ , where $L$ is a holomorphic positive line bundle on the fibres of a flat fibration by compact Kähler manifolds. The leading term of the analytic torsion forms is the integral along the fibre of a locally defined differential form.

Given a holomorphic Hilbertian bundle on a compact complex manifold, we introduce the notion of holomorphic ${{L}^{2}}$ torsion, which lies in the determinant line of the twisted ${{L}^{2}}$ Dolbeault cohomology and represents a volume element there. Here we utilise the theory of determinant lines of Hilbertian modules over finite von Neumann algebras as developed in $[\text{CFM}]$. This specialises to the Ray-Singer-Quillen holomorphic torsion in the finite dimensional case. We compute a metric variation formula for the holomorphic ${{L}^{2}}$ torsion, which shows that it is not in general independent of the choice of Hermitian metrics on the complex manifold and on the holomorphic Hilbertian bundle, which are needed to define it. We therefore initiate the theory of correspondences of determinant lines, that enables us to define a relative holomorphic ${{L}^{2}}$ torsion for a pair of flat Hilbertian bundles, which we prove is independent of the choice of Hermitian metrics on the complex manifold and on the flat Hilbertian bundles.