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 the singularity models in dimension $3$. Moreover, we give an alternative proof of the classification of noncollapsed steady gradient Ricci solitons in dimension $3$ (originally proved by the author in 2012).
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.
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.
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 …
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 study how to get the Ricci expanders from W+-functional through the heat kernel estimate of the conjugate heat equation to the type III singularity of Ricci flow. The Gaussian upper and lower bounds are established for the related heat kernel in accordance to the interesting work of Cao-Zhang for the type I Rici flow.
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}
We construct smooth solutions to Ricci flow starting from a class of singular metrics and give asymptotics for the forward evolution. The singular metrics heal with a set of points (of codimension at least three) coming out of the singular point. We conjecture that these metrics arise as final-time limits of Ricci flow encountering a Type-I singularity modeled on $\mathbb{R}^{p+1} \times S^q$. This gives a picture of Ricci flow through a singularity, in which a neighborhood of the manifold changes topology from $D^{p+1} \times S^{q}$ to $S^p \times D^{q+1}$ (through the cone over $S^p \times S…
In each dimension $N\geq 3$ and for each real number $λ\geq 1$, we construct a family of complete rotationally symmetric solutions to Ricci flow on $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ which encounter a global singularity at a finite time $T$. The singularity forms arbitrarily slowly with the curvature blowing up arbitrarily fast at the rate $(T-t)^{-(λ+1)}$. Near the origin, blow-ups of such a solution converge uniformly to the Bryant soliton. Near spatial infinity, blow-ups of such a solution converge uniformly to the shrinking cylinder soliton. As an application of this result, we prove that there exist standa…
We prove that a Ricci flow cannot develop a finite time singularity assuming the boundedness of a suitable space-time integral norm of the curvature tensor. Moreover, the extensibility of the flow is proved under a Ricci lower bound and the boundedness of a space-time integral norm of the scalar curvature.
In previous work, Angenent, Isenberg, and Knopf created type-II Ricci flow neckpinch singularities. In this paper we construct solutions to Ricci flow whose initial data is the singular metric resulting from these singularities. We show in particular that the curvature decreases at the same rate at which it blew up. This is the first example of Ricci flow starting from a type-II singularity.
The best known finite-time local Ricci flow singularity is the neckpinch, in which a proper subset of the manifold becomes geometrically close to a portion of a shrinking cylinder. In this paper, we prove precise asymptotics for rotationally symmetric Ricci flow neckpinches. We then compare these rigorous results with formal matched asymptotics for fully general neckpinch singularities.
An important and natural question in the analysis of Ricci flow singularity formation in dimensions four and above is as follows: What are the weakest conditions that provide control of the norm of the Riemann curvature tensor? In this short note, we show that on a compact manifold, the trace-free Ricci tensor is controlled in a precise fashion by the other components of the irreducible decomposition of the curvature tensor, without any hypotheses on the initial data.
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-…
In this second part of a series of papers on the long-time behavior of Ricci flows with surgery, we establish a bound on the evolution of the infimal area of simplicial complexes inside a 3-manifold under the Ricci flow. This estimate generalizes an area estimate of Hamilton, which we will recall in the first part of the paper. We remark that in this paper we will mostly be dealing with non-singular Ricci flows. The existence of surgeries will not play an important role.
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.
We give a complete description of the global existence and convergence for the Ricci-Yang-Mills flow on $T^k$ bundles over Riemann surfaces. These results equivalently describe solutions to generalized Ricci flow and pluriclosed flow with symmetry.
On a smooth closed Riemannian manifold, we show short time existence of smooth solutions to the $(α,β)$-Ricci-Yamabe flow, which is a natural generalization of the Ricci flow and the Yamabe flow. We also establish some long time existence theorems for the closed $(α,β)$-Ricci-Yamabe flow by estimating its curvatures.
In this paper we prove a conjecture by Feldman-Ilmanen-Knopf in \cite{FIK} that the gradient shrinking soliton metric they constructed on the tautological line bundle over $\CP^1$ is the uniform limit of blow-ups of a type I Ricci flow singularity on a closed manifold. We use this result to show that limits of blow-ups of Ricci flow singularities on closed four dimensional manifolds do not necessarily have non-negative Ricci curvature.
We prove that if an ALE Ricci-flat manifold $(M,g)$ is linearly stable and integrable, it is dynamically stable under Ricci flow, i.e. any Ricci flow starting close to g exists for all time and converges modulo diffeomorphism to an ALE Ricci-flat metric close to $g$. By adapting Tian's approach in the closed case, we show that integrability holds for ALE Calabi-Yau manifolds which implies that they are dynamically stable.
We consider a generalized Ricci flow with a given (not necessarily closed) three-form and establish the higher derivatives estimates for compact manifolds. As an application, we prove the compactness theorem for this generalized Ricci flow. The similar results still hold for a more generalized Ricci flow.
Given a solution of the (backwards) Ricci flow one can construct a so called canonical soliton metric on space-time, introduced by E. Cabezas-Rivas and P. Topping. We observe that for a mean curvature flow within a (backwards) Ricci flow background, the space-time track of the mean curvature flow yields a canonical soliton of the coupled flow within the canonical Ricci soliton. We show that this provides a link between Hamilton's differential Harnack estimate for the mean curvature flow and Hamilton's differential Harnack estimate for the Ricci flow. Moreover the second fundamental form of our…
We prove that the Ricci flow that contracts a hyperbolic cusp has curvature decay like one over time squared. In order to do this, we prove a new Li-Yau type differential Harnack inequality for Ricci flow on surfaces.
We prove the convergence of Kähler-Ricci flow with some small initial curvature conditions. As applications, we discuss the convergence of Kähler-Ricci flow when the complex structure varies on a Kähler-Einstein manifold.
In this paper we study the long time existence of the Ricci-harmonic flow in terms of scalar curvature and Weyl tensor which extends Cao's result \cite{Cao2011} in the Ricci flow. In dimension four, we also study the integral bound of the "Riemann curvature" for the Ricci-harmonic flow generalizing a recently result of Simon \cite{Simon2015}.
In this note, we prove that on an $n$-dimensional compact toric manifold with positive first Chern class, the Kähler-Ricci flow with any initial $(S^1)^n$-invariant Kähler metric converges to a Kähler-Ricci soliton. In particular, we give another proof for the existence of Kähler-Ricci solitons on a compact toric manifold with positive first Chern class by using the Kähler-Ricci flow.
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.
We study the generalized Kähler-Ricci flow on complex surfaces with nondegenerate Poisson structure, proving long time existence and convergence of the flow to a weak hyperKähler structure.
We show a connection between the linear trace Li-Yau-Hamilton inequality for the Kaehler-Ricci flow and the monotonicity formula for the positive currents. As an application of the linear trace Li-Yau-Hamilton stated in this paper and the one proved by Chow-Hamiltonm, we give another proof on the classification of the limit solutions of the Kaehler-Ricci (Ricci) flow.
In this paper, we give a sufficient condition such that the Ricci flow in $R^2$ exists globally and the flow converges at $t=\infty$ to the flat metric on $R^2$.
We compute the evolution equation of the Weyl tensor under the Ricci flow of a Riemannian manifold and we discuss some consequences for the classification of locally conformally flat Ricci solitons.
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.
