It follows from work of Perelman that any finite-time singularity of the Ricci flow on a compact $3$-manifold is modeled on an ancient $\varkappa$-solution.

We prove that every non-compact ancient $\varkappa$-solution in dimension $3$ is isometric to a family of shrinking cylinders (or a quotient thereof), or to the Bryant soliton. This confirms a conjecture of Perelman.

An irreducible integrable connection $(E,\nabla)$ on a smooth projective complex variety $X$ is called rigid if it gives rise to an isolated point of the corresponding moduli space $\mathcal{M}_{\rm dR}(X)$. According to Simpson’s motivicity conjecture, irreducible rigid flat connections are of geometric origin, that is, arise as subquotients of a Gauss–Manin connection of a family of smooth projective varieties defined on an open dense subvariety of $X$. In this article we study mod-$p$ reductions of irreducible rigid connections and establish results which confirm Simpson’s prediction. In particular, for large $p$, we prove that $p$-curvatures of mod-$p$ reductions of irreducible rigid flat connections are nilpotent, and building on this result, we construct an $F$-isocrystalline realization for irreducible rigid flat connections. More precisely, we prove that there exist smooth models $X_R$ and $(E_R,\nabla_R)$ of $X$ and $(E,\nabla)$, over a finite-type ring $R$, such that for every Witt ring $W(k)$ of a finite field $k$ and every homomorphism $R \to W(k)$, the $p$-adic completion of the base change $(\widehat{E}_{W(k)},\widehat{\nabla}_{W(k)})$ on $\widehat{X}_{W(k)}$ represents an $F$-isocrystal. Subsequently, we show that irreducible rigid flat connections with vanishing $p$-curvatures are unitary. This allows us to prove new cases of the Grothendieck–Katz $p$-curvature conjecture. We also prove the existence of a complete companion correspondence for $F$-isocrystals stemming from irreducible cohomologically rigid connections.

We construct small cancellation labellings for some infinite sequences of finite graphs of bounded degree. We use them to define infinite graphical small cancellation presentations of groups. This technique allows us to provide examples of groups with exotic properties:

• We construct the first examples of finitely generated coarsely non-amenable groups (that is, groups without Guoliang Yu’s Property A) that are coarsely embeddable into a Hilbert space. Moreover, our groups act properly on CAT(0) cubical complexes.

• We construct the first examples of finitely generated groups, with expanders embedded isometrically into their Cayley graphs—in contrast, in the case of the Gromov monster expanders are not even coarsely embedded.

We present further applications.