Mori’s theorem yields the existence of rational curves on projective manifolds such that the canonical bundle is not nef. In this paper we study compact Kähler manifolds such that the canonical bundle is pseudoeffective, but not nef. We present an inductive argument for the existence of rational curves that uses neither deformation theory nor reduction to positive characteristic. The main tool for this inductive strategy is a weak subadjunction formula for log-canonical centres associated to certain big cohomology classes.

Using the mirror theorem [15], we give a Landau–Ginzburg mirror description for the big equivariant quantum cohomology of toric Deligne–Mumford stacks. More precisely, we prove that the big equivariant quantum $D$-module of a toric Deligne–Mumford stack is isomorphic to the Saito structure associated to the mirror Landau–Ginzburg potential. We give a Gelfand–Kapranov–Zelevinsky (GKZ) style presentation of the quantum $D$-module, and a combinatorial description of quantum cohomology as a quantum Stanley–Reisner ring. We establish the convergence of the mirror isomorphism and of quantum cohomology in the big and equivariant setting.

The Ricci flow on the $2$-sphere with marked points is shown to converge in all three stable, semi-stable, and unstable cases. In the stable case, the flow was known to converge without any reparametrization, and a new proof of this fact is given. The semistable and unstable cases are new, and it is shown that the flow converges in the Gromov–Hausdorff topology to a limiting metric space which is also a $2$-sphere, but with different marked points and, hence, a different complex structure. The limiting metric is the unique conical constant curvature metric in the semi-stable case, and the unique conical shrinking gradient Ricci soliton metric in the unstable case.

We give conditions under which the blowup of an extremal Kähler manifold along a submanifold of codimension greater than two admits an extremal metric. This generalizes work of Arezzo–Pacard–Singer, who considered blowups in points.