In this paper, we first show that a complete shrinking breather with Ricci curvature bounded from below must be a shrinking gradient Ricci soliton. This result has several applications. First, we can classify all complete $3$-dimensional shrinking breathers. Second, we can show that every complete shrinking Ricci soliton with Ricci curvature bounded from below must be gradient -- a generalization of Naber's result. Furthermore, we develop a general condition for the existence of the asymptotic shrinking gradient Ricci soliton, which hopefully will contribute to the study of ancient solutions.
As an application of his entropy formula, Perelman proved that every compact shrinking breather is a shrinking gradient Ricci soliton. We give a proof for the complete noncompact case by using Perelman's $\mathcal{L}$-geometry. Our proof follows the argument in Lu and Zheng of constructing an ancient solution, and removes a technical assumption made by them.
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.
In this note we show that, under certain curvature positivity conditions (the weak $\operatorname{PIC}-2$ condition or the nonnegative bisectional curvature condition), a complete and noncompact expanding breather of the Ricci flow is also an expanding gradient Ricci soliton. This is the first no expanding breather theorem in the noncompact category.
Chau-Tam-Yu has proved the non-positivity of Perelman's new Li-Yau-Hamilton type expression on noncompact manifolds. In this article, we further prove that $v$ is negative if the Ricci flow is not end up with an Euclidean space.
Perelman has proved that there cannot exist a nontrivial breather for Ricci flow on a closed manifold. Here we construct nontrivial expanding breathers for Ricci flow in all dimensions when the underlying manifold is allowed to be noncompact.
Suppose $M$ is a compact n-dimensional manifold, $n\ge 2$, with a metric $g_{ij}(x,t)$ that evolves by the Ricci flow $\partial_tg_{ij}=-2R_{ij}$ in $M\times (0,T)$. We will give a simple proof of a recent result of Perelman on the non-existence of shrinking breather without using the logarithmic Sobolev inequality.
In this paper, we study the Ricci flat manifolds with maximal volume growth using Perelman's reduced volume of Ricci flow. We show that if $(M^n,g)$ is an noncompact complete Ricci flat manifold with maximal volume growth satisfying $|Rm|(x)\to 0$ as $d(x)=d_g(x,p)\to \infty$, then $M^n$ has the quadratic curvature decay. Some applications to this result are also presented.
As indicated by the third author in [19], there is a gap in the previous version of this paper by the first two authors [5]. We provide in this version an argument to fix the aforementioned gap. The main proposition, whose proof uses Perelman's techniques, is implied by Ding [9] and is covered by [19]. Our approach, however, is different from theirs. In addition, we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for a three-dimensional $κ$-solution to form a forward singularity. We hope that this condition is helpful in the classification of all three-dimensional $κ$-solutions. Up to now, the only…
In this short paper, we show there do not exist three-dimensional noncompact $κ$-solutions of Ricci flow that have positive curvature and satisfy a Type-I bound. This represents progress towards the proof of Perelman's conjecture that the only complete noncompact three-dimensional $κ$-solution with positive curvature is the Bryant soliton.
Under suitable conditions near infinity and assuming boundedness of curvature tensor, we prove a no breathers theorem in the spirit of Ivey-Perelman for some noncompact Ricci flows. These include Ricci flows on asymptotically flat (AF) manifolds with positive scalar curvature. Since the method for the compact case faces a difficulty, the proof involves solving a new non-local elliptic equation which is the Euler-Lagrange equation of a scaling invariant log Sobolev inequality.
In this paper we prove that there is no $κ$-solution of Ricci flow on 3-dimensional noncompact manifold with strictly positive sectional curvature and blow up at some finite time $T$ satisfying $\int^T_0 \sqrt{T-t} R(p_0,t)dt< \infty$ for some point $p_0$. This partially confirms a conjecture of Perelman.
In this article we study the breathers of the mean curvature flow in the Euclidean space. A breather is a solution to the mean curvature flow which repeats itself up to isometry and scaling once in a while. We prove several no breather theorems in the noncompact category, that is, under certain conditions, a breather of the mean curvature flow must be a solitonic solution (self-shrinker, self-expander, or translator).
In this note, we construct families of functionals of the type of $\mathcal{F}$-functional and $\mathcal{W}$-functional of Perelman. We prove that these new functionals are nondecreasing under the Ricci flow. As applications, we give a proof of the theorem that compact steady Ricci breathers must be Ricci-flat. Using these new functionals, we also give a new proof of Perelman's no non-trivial expanding breather theorem. Furthermore, we prove that compact expanding Ricci breathers must be Einstein by a direct method. In this note, we also extend X. Cao's methods of eigenvalues\cite{C} and impro…
Let $\M$ be a complete, connected noncompact manifold with bounded geometry. Under a condition near infinity, we prove that the Log Sobolev functional (\ref{logfanhan}) has an extremal function decaying exponentially near infinity. We also prove that an extremal function may not exist if the condition is violated. This result has the following consequences. 1. It seems to give the first example of connected, complete manifolds with bounded geometry where a standard Log Sobolev inequality does not have an extremal. 2. It gives a negative answer to the open question on the existence of extremal …
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.
In this short note, we prove that the only simply connected noncompact three-dimensional Type I $κ$-solution to the Ricci flow is the shrinking cylinder. This work can be regarded as a generalization of Cao and Chow, and a complement of Ding and Ni. Up to this point, three-dimensional $κ$-solutions of Type I are completely classified, and it remains interesting to work further towards Perelman's assertion, that the only remaining possibility of three-dimensional noncompact $κ$-solution is the Bryant soliton. Brendle is working to that end. The classification of three-dimensional $κ$-solution i…
We study the long time behaviour of Ricci flow with bubbling-off on a possibly noncompact $3$-manifold of finite volume whose universal cover has bounded geometry. As an application, we give a Ricci flow proof of Thurston's hyperbolisation theorem for $3$-manifolds with toral boundary that generalizes Perelman's proof of the hyperbolisation conjecture in the closed case.
In this paper, we first introduce the weighted forward reduced volume of Ricci flow. The weighted forward reduced volume, which related to expanders of Ricci flow, is well-defined on noncompact manifolds and monotone non-increasing under Ricci flow. Moreover, we show that, just the same as the Perelman's reduced volume, the weighted reduced volume entropy has the value $(4π)^{\frac{n}{2}}$ if and only if the Ricci flow is the trivial flow on flat Euclidean space.
A well-known question of Perelman concerns the classification of noncompact ancient solutions to the Ricci flow in dimension $3$ which have positive sectional curvature and are $κ$-noncollapsed. In this paper, we solve the analogous problem for mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^3$, and prove that the rotationally symmetric bowl soliton is the only noncompact ancient solution of mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which is strictly convex and noncollapsed.
In this article, we introduce a mass-decreasing flow for asymptotically flat three-manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature. This flow is defined by iterating a suitable Ricci flow with surgery and conformal rescalings and has a number of nice properties. In particular, wormholes pinch off and nontrivial spherical space forms bubble off in finite time. Moreover, a noncompact variant of the Perelman-energy is monotone along the flow. Assuming a certain inequality between the mass and this Perelman-energy a priori, we can prove that the flow squeezes out all the initial mass.
Consider the scaling invariant, sharp log entropy (functional) introduced by Weissler \cite{W:1} on noncompact manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. It can also be regarded as a sharpened version of Perelman's W entropy \cite{P:1} in the stationary case. We prove that it has a minimizer if and only if the manifold is isometric to $\R^n$. Using this result, it is proven that a class of noncompact manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature is isometric to $\R^n$. Comparing with the well known flatness results in \cite{An:1}, \cite{Ba:1} and \cite{BKN:1} on asymptotically flat manifolds and…
We investigate a new geometric flow which consists of a coupled system of the Ricci flow on a closed manifold M with the harmonic map flow of a map phi from M to some closed target manifold N with a (possibly time-dependent) positive coupling constant alpha. This system can be interpreted as the gradient flow of an energy functional F_alpha which is a modification of Perelman's energy F for the Ricci flow, including the Dirichlet energy for the map phi. Surprisingly, the coupled system may be less singular than the Ricci flow or the harmonic map flow alone. In particular, we can always rule ou…
We demonstrate the irreversibility of a wide class of world-sheet renormalization group (RG) flows to first order in $α'$ in string theory. Our techniques draw on the mathematics of Ricci flows, adapted to asymptotically flat target manifolds. In the case of somewhere-negative scalar curvature (of the target space), we give a proof by constructing an entropy that increases monotonically along the flow, based on Perelman's Ricci flow entropy. One consequence is the absence of periodic solutions, and we are able to give a second, direct proof of this. If the scalar curvature is everywhere positi…