Based on a suggestion of Richard Hamilton, we give an alternate proof of his matrix Harnack inequality for solutions of the Ricci flow with positive curvature operator. This Harnack inequality says that a certain endomorphism, consisting of an expression in the curvature and its first two covariant derivatives, of the bundle of 2-forms Whitney sum 1-forms is nonnegative. The idea is to consider the 2-form which minimizes the associated quadratic form to obtain a symmetric 2-tensor. A long but straightforward computation implies this 2-tensor is a subsolution to heat-type equation. A standard application of the maximum principle implies the result.
In this paper, we prove the Hamilton differential Harnack inequality for positive solutions to the heat equation of the Witten Laplacian on complete Riemannian manifolds with the $CD(-K, m)$-condition, where $m\in [n, \infty)$ and $K\geq 0$ are two constants. Moreover, we introduce the $W$-entropy and prove the $W$-entropy formula for the fundamental solution of the Witten Laplacian on complete Riemannian manifolds with the $CD(-K, m)$-condition and on compact manifolds equipped with $(-K, m)$-super Ricci flows.
We introduce the notion of Canonical Expanding Ricci Soliton, and use it to derive new Harnack inequalities for Ricci flow. This viewpoint also gives geometric insight into the existing Harnack inequalities of Hamilton and Brendle.
In [10], R. Hamilton established a differential Harnack inequality for solutions to the Ricci flow with nonnegative curvature operator. We show that this inequality holds under the weaker condition that M x R^2 has nonnegative isotropic curvature.
We show that the linear trace Harnack quadratic on a steady gradient Ricci soliton satisfies the heat equation. Similar result holds for shrinkers. We also present an interpolation between Perelman's and Cao--Hamilton's Harnacks on a steady soliton.
We establish a one-parameter family of Harnack inequalities connecting the constrained trace Li-Yau differential Harnack inequality for a nonlinear parabolic equation to the constrained trace Chow-Hamilton Harnack inequality for this nonlinear equation with respect to evolving metrics related to Ricci flow on a 2-dimensional closed manifold. This result can be regarded as a nonlinear version of the previous work of Y. Zheng and the author (Arch. Math. 94 (2010), 591-600).
We offer an algorithmic approach for determining Harnack quantities for the curve shortening flow and we show how, following this procedure, one can obtain Hamilton's Harnack inequality for this flow $κ_t + \frac{1}{2t}κ\geq \frac{κ_s^2}κ$, where $κ$ is the curvature of the curve being deformed by the flow.
We present a simple connection between differential Harnack inequalities for hypersurface flows and natural concavity properties of their time-of-arrival functions. We prove these concavity properties directly for a large class of flows by applying a concavity maximum principle argument to the corresponding level set flow equations. In particular, this yields a short proof of Hamilton's differential Harnack inequality for mean curvature flow and, more generally, Andrews' differential Harnack inequalities for certain "$α$-inverse-concave" flows.
In this paper, we prove the Li-Yau type Harnack inequality and Hamilton type dimension free Harnack inequality for the heat equation $\partial_t u=Lu$ associated with the time dependent Witten Laplacian on complete Riemannian manifolds equipped with a variant of the $(K, m)$-super Perelman Ricci flows and the $K$-super Perelman Ricci flows.
We derive a matrix version of Li \& Yau--type estimates for positive solutions of semilinear heat equations on Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvatures and parallel Ricci tensor, similarly to what R.~Hamilton did in~\cite{hamilton7} for the standard heat equation. We then apply these estimates to obtain some Harnack--type inequalities, which give local bounds on the solutions in terms of the geometric quantities involved.
In the first part of this paper, we get new Li-Yau type gradient estimates for positive solutions of heat equation on Riemmannian manifolds with $Ricci(M)\ge -k$, $k\in \mathbb R$. As applications, several parabolic Harnack inequalities are obtained and they lead to new estimates on heat kernels of manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded from below. In the second part, we establish a Perelman type Li-Yau-Hamilton differential Harnack inequality for heat kernels on manifolds with $Ricci(M)\ge -k$, which generalizes a result of L. Ni \cite{NL1,NL4}. As applications, we obtain new Harnack inequali…
In this paper we study the heat equation (of Hodge-Laplacian) deformation of $(p, p)$-forms on a Kähler manifold. After identifying the condition and establishing that the positivity of a $(p, p)$-form solution is preserved under such an invariant condition we prove the sharp differential Harnack (in the sense of Li-Yau-Hamilton) estimates for the positive solutions of the Hodge-Laplacian heat equation. We also prove a nonlinear version coupled with the Kähler-Ricci flow and some interpolating matrix differential Harnack type estimates for both the Kähler-Ricci flow and the Ricci flow.
In this paper, we prove logarithmic Sobolev inequalities and derive the Hamilton Harnack inequality for the heat semigroup of the Witten Laplacian on complete Riemannian manifolds equipped with $K$-super Perelman Ricci flow. We establish the $W$-entropy formula for the heat equation of the Witten Laplacian and prove a rigidity theorem on complete Riemannian manifolds satisfying the $CD(K, m)$ condition, and extend the $W$-entropy formula to time dependent Witten Laplacian on compact Riemannian manifolds with $(K, m)$-super Perelman Ricci flow, where $K\in \mathbb{R}$ and $m\in [n, \infty]$ are…
This article is devoted to the study of several estimations for a positive solution to a nonlinear weighted parabolic equation on a weighted Riemannian manifold. We therefore derive new Li-Yau type and Hamilton type gradient estimates yielding several consequences. We also derive Hessian estimate and some corollaries for the same equation. Among the applications of our estimates discussed here are Harnack type inequalities, Liouville type theorems and a local time reversed Harnack inequality.
In this paper, by maximum principle and cutoff function, we investigate gradient estimates for positive solutions to two nonlinear parabolic equations under Ricci flow. The related Harnack inequalities are deduced. An result about positive solutions on closed manifolds under Ricci flow is abtained. As applications, gradient estimates and Harnack inequalities for positive solutions to the heat equation under Ricci flow are derived. These results in the paper can be regard as generalizing the gradient estimates of Li-Yau, J. Y. Li, Hamilton and Li-Xu to the Ricci flow. Our results also improve t…
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…
Let $u$ be a positive solution of the ultraparabolic equation \begin{equation*} \partial_t u=\sum_{i=1}^n \partial_{x_i}^2 u+\sum_{i=1}^k x_i\partial_{x_{n+i}}u \hspace{8mm} \mbox{on} \hspace{4mm} \mathbb{R}^{n+k}\times (0,T), \end{equation*} where $1\leq k\leq n$ and $0<T \leq +\infty$. Assume that $u$ and its derivatives (w.r.t. the space variables) up to the second order are bounded on any compact subinterval of $(0,T)$. Then the difference $H(\log u)- H(\log f)$ of the Hessian matrices of $\log u$ and of $\log f$ (both w.r.t. the space variables) is non-negatively definite, where $f$ is th…
In [ZY2], the second author proved Perelman's assertion, namely, for an ancient Ricci flow with bounded and nonnegative curvature operator, bounded entropy is equivalent to noncollapsing on all scales. In this paper, we continue this discussion. It turns out that the curvature operator nonnegativity is not a necessary condition, and we need only to assume a consequence of Hamilton's trace Harnack. Furthermore, we show that this condition holds for steady Ricci solitons with nonnegative Ricci curvature.
We study the fast diffusion equation (FDE) with a linear forcing term under the Ricci flow on complete manifolds with bounded curvature and nonnegative curvature operator. We prove Aronson-Bénilan and Li-Yau-Hamilton type differential Harnack estimates for positive solutions of the FDE. In addition, we use similar method to prove certain Li-Yau-Hamilton estimates for the heat equation and conjugate heat equation which extend those obtained by X. Cao and R. Hamilton, X. Cao, and S. Kuang and Q. Zhang to noncompact setting.
Recall that if $(M^n,g)$ satisfies $\mathrm{Ric}\geq 0$, then the Li-Yau Differential Harnack Inequality tells us for each nonnegative $f:M\to \mathbb{R}^+$, with $f_t$ its heat flow, that $\frac{Δf_t}{f_t}-\frac{|\nabla f_t|^2}{f_t^2} +\frac{n}{2t}\geq 0.$ Our main result will be to generalize this to path space $P_xM$ of the manifold. A key point is that instead of considering infinite dimensional gradients and Laplacians on $P_xM$ we will consider a family of finite dimensional gradients and Laplace operators. Namely, for each $H^1_0$-function $φ:\mathbb{R}^+\to \mathbb{R}$ we will define t…
Following work of Ecker, we consider a weighted Gibbons-Hawking-York functional on a Riemannian manifold-with-boundary. We compute its variational properties and its time derivative under Perelman's modified Ricci flow. The answer has a boundary term which involves an extension of Hamilton's Harnack expression for the mean curvature flow in Euclidean space. We also derive the evolution equations for the second fundamental form and the mean curvature, under a mean curvature flow in a Ricci flow background. In the case of a gradient Ricci soliton background, we discuss mean curvature solitons an…
We generalize Hamilton's matrix Li-Yau-type Harnack estimate for the Ricci flow by considering the space of all LYH (Li-Yau-Hamilton) quadratics that arise as curvature tensors of space-time connections satisfying the Ricci flow with respect to the natural space-time degenerate metric. As a special case, we employ scaling arguments to derive a linear-type matrix LYH estimate. The new LYH quadratics obtained in this way are associated to the system of the Ricci flow coupled to a 1-form and a 2-form evolving by heat-type equations. In the case of a Kaehler solution, a special case of our linear-…
We show some computations related to the motion by mean curvature flow of a submanifold inside an ambient Riemannian manifold evolving by Ricci or backward Ricci flow. Special emphasis is given to the possible generalization of Huisken's monotonicity formula and its connection with the validity of some Li--Yau--Hamilton differential Harnack--type inequalities in a moving Riemannian manifold.
In this paper, we prove the characterization of the $(K, \infty)$-super Perelman Ricci flows by various functional inequalities and gradient estimate for the heat semigroup generated by the Witten Laplacian on manifolds equipped with time dependent metrics and potentials. As a byproduct, we derive the Hamilton type dimension free Harnack inequality on manifolds with $(K, \infty)$-super Perelman Ricci flows. Based on a new second order differential inequality on the Boltzmann-Shannon entropy for the heat equation of the Witten Laplacian, we introduce a new $W$-entropy quantity and prove its mon…
We study the Ricci flow for initial metrics with positive isotropic curvature (strictly PIC for short). In the first part of this paper, we prove new curvature pinching estimates which ensure that blow-up limits are uniformly PIC in all dimensions. Moreover, in dimension $n \geq 12$, we show that blow-up limits are weakly PIC2. This can be viewed as a higher-dimensional version of the fundamental Hamilton-Ivey pinching estimate in dimension $3$. In the second part, we develop a theory of ancient solutions which have bounded curvature; are $κ$-noncollapsed; are weakly PIC2; and are uniformly PI…
