We study singularity formation of complete Ricci flow solutions, motivated by two applications: (a) improving the understanding of the behavior of the essential blowup sequences of Enders-Muller-Topping on noncompact manifolds, and (b) obtaining further evidence in favor of the conjectured stability of generalized cylinders as Ricci flow singularity models.
We show that a rescale limit at any degenerate singularity of Ricci flow in dimension 3 is a steady gradient soliton. In particular, we give a geometric description of type I and type II singularities.
In this short paper, we show that Kähler-Ricci flows over closed manifolds would have scalar curvature blown-up for finite time singularity. Certain control of the blowing-up is achieved with some mild assumption.
For the Kähler-Ricci flow on a compact Kähler manifold with semi-ample canonical line bundle, we prove the singularity type at infinity does not depend on the choice of the initial metric. We also provide new simple proofs for some existing classification results on infinite-time singularity type of the Kähler-Ricci flow.
On a compact Kähler manifold with semi-ample canonical line bundle and Kodaira dimension one, we observe a relation between the infinite-time singularity type of the Kähler-Ricci flow and the characteristic indexes of singular fibers of the semi-ample fibration.
In a series of papers, Bamler [Bam20a,Bam20b,Bam20c] further developed the high-dimensional theory of Hamilton's Ricci flow to include new monotonicity formulas, a completely general compactness theorem, and a long-sought partial regularity theory analogous to Cheeger--Colding theory. In this paper we give an application of his theory to lower bounds for the scalar curvatures of singularity models for Ricci flow. In the case of $4$-dimensional non-Ricci-flat steady soliton singularity models, we obtain as a consequence a quadratic decay lower bound for the scalar curvature.
We consider the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems and the Lorentzian splitting theorem under the weaker curvature condition of nonnegative Bakry-Emery-Ricci curvature $Ric_f^m$ in timelike directions. We prove that they still hold when $m$ is finite, and when $m$ is infinite, they hold under the additional assumption that $f$ is bounded from above.
In this paper, we consider Ricci flows admitting closed and smooth tangent flows in the sense of Bamler [Bam20c]. The tangent flow in question can be either a tangent flow at infinity for an ancient Ricci flow, or a tangent flow at a singular point for a Ricci flow developing a finite-time singularity. Among other things, we prove: (1) that in these cases the tangent flow must be unique, (2) that if a Ricci flow with finite-time singularity has a closed singularity model, then the singularity is of Type I and the singularity model is the tangent flow at the singular point; this answers a quest…
In this paper, we first derive a pinching estimate on the traceless Ricci curvature in term of scalar curvature and Weyl tensor under the Ricci flow. Then we apply this estimate to study finite-time singularity behavior. We show that if the scalar curvature is uniformly bounded, then the Weyl tensor has to blow up, as a consequence, the corresponding singularity model must be Ricci flat with non-vanishing Weyl tensor.
Consider the Kahler-Ricci flow with finite time singularities over any closed Kahler manifold. We prove the existence of the flow limit in the sense of current towards the time of singularity. This answers affirmatively a problem raised by Tian on the uniqueness of the weak limit from sequential convergence construction. The notion of minimal singularity in the study of positive current, introduced by Demailly, comes up naturally. We also provide some discussion on the infinite time singularity case for comparison. The consideration can be applied to more flexible evolution equation of Kahler-…
We investigate Riemannian (non-Kahler) Ricci flow solutions that develop finite-time Type-I singularities and present evidence in favor of a conjecture that parabolic rescalings at the singularities converge to singularity models that are shrinking Kahler-Ricci solitons. Specifically, the singularity model for these solutions is expected to be the "blowdown soliton" discovered in [FIK03]. Our partial results support the conjecture that the blowdown soliton is stable under Ricci flow, as well as the conjectured stability of the subspace of Kahler metrics under Ricci flow.
The Ricci flow is a natural evolution equation for Riemannian metrics on a given manifold. The main goal is to understand singularity formation. In his spectacular 2002 breakthrough, Perelman achieved a qualitative understanding of singularity formation in dimension $3$. More precisely, Perelman showed that every finite-time singularity to the Ricci flow in dimension $3$ is modeled on an ancient $κ$-solution. Moreover, Perelman proved a structure theorem for ancient $κ$-solutions in dimension $3$. In this survey, we discuss recent developments which have led to a complete classification of all…
We consider the Kaehler-Ricci flow on complete finite-volume metrics that live on the complement of a divisor in a compact Kaehler manifold X. Assuming certain spatial asymptotics on the initial metric, we compute the singularity time in terms of cohomological data on X. We also give a sufficient condition for the singularity, if there is one, to be type-II.
In this note we discuss estimates for the curvature of 4-dimensional gradient Ricci soliton singularity models by applying Perelman's point selection, a fundamental result of Cheeger and Naber, and topological lemmas.
This short note studies the collapsing behavior of the Kähler-Ricci flow on a compact Kähler manifold X admitting a holomorphic submersion X -> B where B is a Kähler manifold of lower dimension than X. We give cohomological and curvature conditions under which the fibers collapse at the optimal rate ~(T-t)^{1/2}
In this work, we are going to find sufficient conditions on the initial triaxial Bianchi IX metric on some 4-dimensional manifolds foliated by homogeneous S3 for a Type I singularity to occur when it is flowed under the Ricci flow. This work generalises the study on rotationally symmetric manifolds done by Angenent and Isenberg as well as the work of Isenberg, Knopf, and Sesum, in which they introduced some ansatz for the problem setup.
In this paper we consider $4$-dimensional steady soliton singularity models, i.e., complete steady gradient Ricci solitons that arise as the rescaled limit of a finite time singular solution of the Ricci flow on a closed $4$-manifold. In particular, we study the geometry at infinity of such Ricci solitons under the assumption that their tangent flow at infinity is the product of $\mathbb{R}$ with a $3$-dimensional spherical space form. We also classify the tangent flows at infinity of $4$-dimensional steady soliton singularity models in general.
We study singularity formation of Kähler-Ricci flow on a Kähler manifold that admits a horizontally homothetic conformal submersion into another Kähler manifold. We will derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the preservation of horizontally homothetic conformal submersion along the flow and establish the formation of type I singularity together with a standard splitting of the Cheeger-Gromov limit. This generalizes the setup of Calabi symmetry that was discussed in \cite{1} and \cite{2}, thus gives new proofs for the results listed there.
We show that a simply-connected closed four-dimensional Ricci flow whose Ricci curvature is uniformly bounded below and whose volume does not approach zero must converge to a $C^{0}$ orbifold at any finite-time singularity, so has an extension through the singularity via orbifold Ricci flow. Moreover, a Type-I blowup of the flow based at any orbifold point converges to a flat cone in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense, without passing to a subsequence. In addition, we prove $L^{p}$ bounds for the curvature tensor on time-slices for any $p<2$. In higher dimensions, we show that every singular point of …
For any manifold $N^p$ admitting an Einstein metric with positive Einstein constant, we study the behavior of the Ricci flow on high-dimensional products $M = N^p \times S^{q+1}$ with doubly-warped product metrics. In particular, we provide a rigorous construction of local, type II, conical singularity formation on such spaces. It is shown that for any $k > 1$ there exists a solution with curvature blow-up rate $\| Rm \|_{\infty} (t) \gtrsim (T-t)^{-k}$ with singularity modeled on a Ricci-flat cone at parabolic scales.
In this paper, we study the Ricci flow on a closed manifold of dimension $n \ge 4$ and finite time interval $[0,T)~(T < \infty)$ on which the scalar curvature are uniformly bounded. We prove that if such flow of dimension $4 \le n \le 7$ has finite time singularities, then every blow-up sequence of a locally Type I singularity has certain property. Here, locally Type I singularity is what Buzano and Di-Matteo defined.
Huisken studied asymptotic behavior of a mean curvature flow in a Euclidean space when it develops a singularity of type I, and proved that its rescaled flow converges to a self-shrinker in the Euclidean space. In this paper, we generalize this result for a Ricci-mean curvature flow moving along a Ricci flow constructed from a gradient shrinking Ricci soliton.
We give two new proofs of Perelman's theorem that shrinking breathers of Ricci flow on closed manifolds are gradient Ricci solitons, using the fact that the singularity models of type I solutions are shrinking gradient Ricci solitons and the fact that non-collapsed type I ancient solutions have rescaled limits being shrinking gradient Ricci solitons.
Ricci solitons are natural generalizations of Einstein metrics. They are also special solutions to Hamilton's Ricci flow and play important roles in the singularity study of the Ricci flow. In this paper, we survey some of the recent progress on Ricci solitons.
We introduce certain spherically symmetric singular Ricci solitons and study their stability under the Ricci flow from a dynamical PDE point of view. The solitons in question exist for all dimensions $n+1\ge 3$, and all have a point singularity where the curvature blows up; their evolution under the Ricci flow is in sharp contrast to the evolution of their smooth counterparts. In particular, the family of diffeomorphisms associated with the Ricci flow "pushes away" from the singularity causing the evolving soliton to open up immediately becoming an incomplete (but non-singular) metric. In the …
We study the Ricci flow on $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, with $n\geq 2$, starting at some complete bounded curvature rotationally symmetric metric $g_{0}$. We first focus on the case where $(\mathbb{R}^{n+1},g_{0})$ does not contain minimal hyperspheres; we prove that if $g_{0}$ is asymptotic to a cylinder then the solution develops a Type-II singularity and converges to the Bryant soliton, while if the curvature of $g_{0}$ decays at infinity, then the solution is immortal. As a corollary, we prove a conjecture by Chow and Tian about Perelman's standard solutions. We then consider a class of asymptotica…
In this article, we consider the Angenent-Caputo-Knopf's Ricci Flow through neckpinch singularities. We will explain how one can see the A-C-K's Ricci flow through a neckpinch singularity as a flow of integral current spaces. We then prove the continuity of this weak flow with respect to the Sormani-Wenger Intrinsic Flat (SWIF) distance.
In this paper, we study the singularities of two extended Ricci flow systems --- connection Ricci flow and Ricci harmonic flow using newly-defined curvature quantities. Specifically, we give the definition of three types of singularities and their corresponding singularity models, and then prove the convergence. In addition, for Ricci harmonic flow, we use the monotonicity of functional $ν_α$ to show the connection between finite-time singularity and shrinking Ricci harmonic soliton. At last, we explore the property of ancient solutions for Ricci harmonic flow.
It is known from work of Perelman that any finite-time singularity of the Ricci flow on a compact three-manifold is modeled on an ancient $κ$-solution. We prove that the every noncompact ancient $κ$-solution in dimension $3$ is isometric to either the shrinking cylinders (or a quotient thereof), or the Bryant soliton.
We study the collapsing behavior of the Kaehler-Ricci flow on a compact Kaehler manifold X admitting a holomorphic submersion X -> S coming from its canonical class, where S is a Kaehler manifold with dim S < dim X. We show that the flow metric degenerates at exactly the rate of e^{-t} as predicted by the cohomology information, and so the fibers collapse at the optimal rate diameter ~ e^{-t/2}. Consequently, it leads to some analytic and geometric extensions to the regular case of Song-Tian's works on elliptic and Calabi-Yau fibrations. Its applicability to general Calabi-Yau fibrations with …
We extend some convergence results on nonsingular compact Ricci flows in the papers \cite{Ha:1}, \cite{Se:1} and \cite{FZZ:2} to certain infinite volume noncompact cases which are "partially" nonsingular. As an application, for a finite time singularity which is partially type I, it is shown that a blow up limit is a gradient shrinking soliton.
We discuss the Ricci flow on homogeneous 4-manifolds. After classifying these manifolds, we note that there are families of initial metrics such that we can diagonalize them and the Ricci flow preserves the diagonalization. We analyze the long time behavior of these families. We find that if a solution exists for all time, then the flow exhibits a type III singularity in the sense of Hamilton.
Let $(M,g,ϕ)$ be a solution to the Ricci flow coupled with the heat equation for a scalar field $ϕ$. We show that a complete, $κ$-noncollapsed solution $(M,g,ϕ)$ to this coupled Ricci flow with a Type I singularity at time $T<\infty$ will converge to a non-trivial Ricci soliton after parabolic rescaling, if the base point is Type I singular. A key ingredient is a version of Perelman pseudo-locality for the coupled Ricci flow.
We study the Ricci flow on $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ starting at an SU(2)-cohomogeneity 1 metric $g_{0}$ whose restriction to any hypersphere is a Berger metric. We prove that if $g_{0}$ has no necks and is bounded by a cylinder, then the solution develops a global Type-II singularity and converges to the Bryant soliton when suitably dilated at the origin. This is the first example in dimension $n > 3$ of a non-rotationally symmetric Type-II flow converging to a rotationally symmetric singularity model. Next, we show that if instead $g_{0}$ has no necks, its curvature decays and the Hopf fibers are not…
This paper concerns conditions related to the first finite singularity time of a Ricci flow solution on a closed manifold. In particular, we provide a systematic approach to the mean value inequality method, suggested by N. Le and F. He. We also display a close connection between this method and time slice analysis of B. Wang. As an application, we prove several inequalities for a Ricci flow solution on a manifold with nonnegative isotropic curvature.
In this paper, we give a delay estimate of scalar curvature for a complete non-compact expanding (or steady) gradient Ricci soliton with nonnegative Ricci curvature. As an application, we prove that any complete non-compact expanding (or steady) gradient Kähler-Ricci solitons with positively pinched Ricci curvature should be Ricci flat. The result answers a question in case of Kähler-Ricci solitons proposed by Chow, Lu and Ni in a book.
We implement methods from computational homology to obtain a topological signal of singularity formation in a selection of geometries evolved numerically by Ricci flow. Our approach, based on persistent homology, produces precise, quantitative measures describing the behavior of an entire collection of data across a discrete sample of times. We analyze the topological signals of geometric criticality obtained numerically from the application of persistent homology to models manifesting singularities under Ricci flow. The results we obtain for these numerical models suggest that the topological…
We prove that for any complete three-manifold with a lower Ricci curvature bound and a lower bound on the volume of balls of radius one, a solution to the Ricci flow exists for short time. Actually our proof also yields a (non-canonical) way to flow and regularize some interior region of a non-complete initial data satisfying the aformentioned bounds.
We examine a Type-1 neck pinch singularity in simplicial Ricci flow (SRF) for an axisymmetric piecewise flat 3-dimensional geometry with 3-sphere topology. SRF was recently introduced as an unstructured mesh formulation of Hamilton's Ricci flow (RF). It describes the RF of a piecewise-flat simplicial geometry. In this paper, we apply the SRF equations to a representative double-lobed axisymmetric piecewise flat geometry with mirror symmetry at the neck similar to the geometry studied by Angenent and Knopf (A-K). We choose a specific radial profile and compare the SRF equations with the corresp…
We study the four dimensional Ricci flow with the help of local invariants. If $(M^4, g(t))$ is a solution to the Ricci flow and $x \in M^4$, we can associate to the point $x$ a one-parameter family of curves, which lie in the product of two projective lines. This allows us to reformulate the Cheeger-Gromov-Hamilton Compactness Theorem in the context of these curves. We use this result, in order to study Type I singularities in dimension four and give a characterization of the corresponding singularity models.