We show that fractal percolation sets in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ almost surely intersect every hyperplane absolutely winning (HAW) set with full Hausdorff dimension. In particular, if $E\subset\mathbb{R}^{d}$ is a realisation of a fractal percolation process, then almost surely (conditioned on $E\neq\emptyset$), for every countable collection $\left(f_{i}\right)_{i\in\mathbb{N}}$ of $C^{1}$ diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb{R}^{d}$, $\dim_{H}\left(E\cap\left(\bigcap_{i\in\mathbb{N}}f_{i}\left(\text{BA}_{d}\right)\right)\right)=\dim_{H}\left(E\right)$, where $\text{BA}_{d}$ is the set of badly approximable vectors in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$. We show this by proving that E almost surely contains hyperplane diffuse subsets which are Ahlfors-regular with dimensions arbitrarily close to $\dim_{H}\left(E\right)$.

We achieve this by analysing Galton–Watson trees and showing that they almost surely contain appropriate subtrees whose projections to $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ yield the aforementioned subsets of E. This method allows us to obtain a more general result by projecting the Galton–Watson trees against any similarity IFS whose attractor is not contained in a single affine hyperplane. Thus our general result relates to a broader class of random fractals than fractal percolation.

Let \[||x||\] denote the distance from \[x \in \mathbb{R}\] to the nearest integer. In this paper, we prove a new existence and density result for matrices \[A \in {\mathbb{R}^{m \times n}}\] satisfying the inequality

\[\mathop {\lim \inf }\limits_{|q{|_\infty } \to + \infty } \prod\limits_{j = 1}^n {\max } \{ 1,|{q_j}|\} \log {\left( {\prod\limits_{j = 1}^n {\max } \{ 1,|{q_j}|\} } \right)^{m + n - 1}}\prod\limits_{i = 1}^m {{A_i}q} > 0,\]

where q ranges in \[{\mathbb{Z}^n}\] and Ai denote the rows of the matrix A. This result extends previous work of Moshchevitin both to arbitrary dimension and to the inhomogeneous setting. The estimates needed to apply Moshchevitin’s method to the case m > 2 are not currently available. We therefore develop a substantially different method, based on Cantor-like set constructions of Badziahin and Velani. Matrices with the above property also appear to have very small sums of reciprocals of fractional parts. This fact helps us to shed light on a question raised by Lê and Vaaler on such sums, thereby proving some new estimates in higher dimension.

We study embedded spheres in 4–manifolds (2–knots) via doubly pointed trisection diagrams, showing that such descriptions are unique up to stabilisation and handleslides, and we describe how to obtain trisection diagrams for certain cut-and-paste operations along 2–knots directly from doubly pointed trisection diagrams. The operations described are classical surgery, Gluck surgery, blowdown, and (±4)–rational blowdown, and we illustrate our techniques and results with many examples.

The Zagier L-series encode data of real quadratic fields. We study the average size of these L-series, and prove asymptotic expansions and omega results for the expansion. We then show how the error term in the asymptotic expansion can be used to obtain error terms in the prime geodesic theorem.

We study projectional properties of Poisson cut-out sets E in non-Euclidean spaces. In the first Heisenbeg group \[\mathbb{H} = \mathbb{C} \times \mathbb{R}\], endowed with the Korányi metric, we show that the Hausdorff dimension of the vertical projection \[\pi (E)\] (projection along the center of \[\mathbb{H}\]) almost surely equals \[\min \{ 2,{\dim _\operatorname{H} }(E)\} \] and that \[\pi (E)\] has non-empty interior if \[{\dim _{\text{H}}}(E) > 2\]. As a corollary, this allows us to determine the Hausdorff dimension of E with respect to the Euclidean metric in terms of its Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension \[{\dim _{\text{H}}}(E)\].

We also study projections in the one-point compactification of the Heisenberg group, that is, the 3-sphere \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] endowed with the visual metric d obtained by identifying \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] with the boundary of the complex hyperbolic plane. In \[{{\text{S}}^3}\], we prove a projection result that holds simultaneously for all radial projections (projections along so called “chains”). This shows that the Poisson cut-outs in \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] satisfy a strong version of the Marstrand’s projection theorem, without any exceptional directions.

For 0 ≤ ξ ≤ ω1, we define the notion of ξ-weakly precompact and ξ-weakly compact sets in Banach spaces and prove that a set is ξ-weakly precompact if and only if its weak closure is ξ-weakly compact. We prove a quantified version of Grothendieck’s compactness principle and the characterisation of Schur spaces obtained in [7] and [9]. For 0 ≤ ξ ≤ ω1, we prove that a Banach space X has the ξ-Schur property if and only if every ξ-weakly compact set is contained in the closed, convex hull of a weakly null (equivalently, norm null) sequence. The ξ = 0 and ξ= ω1 cases of this theorem are the theorems of Grothendieck and [7], [9], respectively.