An étale structure over a topological space X is a continuous family of structures (in some first-order language) indexed over X. We give an exposition of this fundamental concept from sheaf theory and its relevance to countable model theory and invariant descriptive set theory. We show that many classical aspects of spaces of countable models can be naturally framed and generalized in the context of étale structures, including the Lopez-Escobar theorem on invariant Borel sets, an omitting types theorem, and various characterizations of Scott rank. We also present and prove the countable version of the Joyal–Tierney representation theorem, which states that the isomorphism groupoid of an étale structure determines its theory up to bi-interpretability; and we explain how special cases of this theorem recover several recent results in the literature on groupoids of models and functors between them.

We study the stable pairs theory of local curves in 3-folds with descendent insertions. The rationality of the partition function of descendent invariants is established for the full local curve geometry (equivariant with respect to the scaling 2-torus), including relative conditions and odd-degree insertions for higher-genus curves. The capped 1-leg descendent vertex (equivariant with respect to the 3-torus) is also proven to be rational. The results are obtained by combining geometric constraints with a detailed analysis of the poles of the descendent vertex.

Let Mc be the moduli space of semistable torsion-free sheaves of rank 2 with Chern classes c1 = 0 and c2 = c over a K3 surface with generic polarization. When $c=2n\ge 4$ is even, Mc is a singular projective variety which admits a symplectic form, called the Mukai form, on the smooth part. A natural question raised by O'Grady asks if there exists a desingularization on which the Mukai form extends everywhere nondegenerately. In this paper we show that such a desingularization does not exist for many even integers c by computing the stringy Euler numbers.