In this talk I will discuss the existence of complete extremal metrics on the complement of simple normal crossings divisors in compact Kähler manifolds, and stability of pairs, in the toric case. Using constructions of Legendre and Apostolov-Calderbank-Gauduchon, we completely characterize when this holds for Hirzebruch surfaces. In particular, our results show that relative stability of a pair and the existence of extremal Poincaré type/cusp metrics do not coincide. However, stability is equivalent to the existence of a complete extremal metric on the complement of the divisor in our examples. It is the Poincaré type condition on the asymptotics of the extremal metric that fails in general.
This is joint work with Vestislav Apostolov and Hugues Auvray.[-]

We will describe the construction of complete non-compact Ricci-flat manifolds of dimension 7 and 8 with holonomy $G_{2}$ and Spin(7) respectively. The examples we consider all have non-maximal volume growth and an asymptotic geometry, so-called ALC geometry, that generalises to higher dimension the asymptotic geometry of 4-dimensional ALF hyperkähler metrics. The interest in these metrics is motivated by the study of codimension 1 collapse of compact manifolds with exceptional holonomy. The constructions we will describe are based on the study of adiabatic limits of ALC metrics on principal Seifert circle fibrations over asymptotically conical orbifolds, cohomogeneity one techniques and the desingularisation of ALC spaces with isolated conical singularities. The talk is partially based on joint work with Mark Haskins and Johannes Nordstrm.[-]

An $R$-space is a compact homogeneous space obtained as an orbit of the isotropy representation of a Riemannian symmetric space. It is known that each $R$-space has the canonical embedding into a Kähler $C$-space as a real form which is a compact embedded totally geodesic Lagrangian submanifold. The minimal Maslov number of Lagrangian submanifolds in symplectic manifolds is an invariant under Hamiltonian isotopies and very fundamental to the study of the Floer homology for intersections of Lagrangian submanifolds. In this talk we provide a Lie theoretic formula for the minimal Maslov number of $R$-spaces canonically embedded in Einstein-Kähler $C$-spaces and discuss several examples of the calculation by the formula.[-]