Geometry of 3-dimensional gradient Ricci solitons with positive curvature (Q2580234)

A (steady) Ricci soliton is a solution of the Ricci flow that moves only by diffeomorphisms. It is called a gradient Ricci soliton if there exists a potential function \(f\) such that \(R_{ij}=\nabla_i \nabla_j f\). Gradient Ricci solitons play an important role in the study of singularities of the Ricci flow, arising as limits of dilations about singularities. In two dimensions, Hamilton's ``cigar soliton'' \(\Sigma^2\), which is \({\mathbb R}^1 \times {\mathbb S}^1\) with warped product metric \(g=dr^2 + \tanh^2 r d\theta^2\), is the unique (up to homothety) nonflat complete gradient Ricci soliton with curvature bounded below. The curvature falls off exponentially with the distance from a fixed point, and the soliton is asymptotic to a cylinder of radius one. Bryant and Ivey considered the higher dimensional generalization of this, a warped product \( g=dr^2 + \omega(r)^2 g_{can}\) on \({\mathbb R}^1 \times {\mathbb S}^n\) for \(n \geq 2\), where \(g_{can}\) is the standard metric on the sphere, and showed that there exists a unique (up to homothety) complete, rotationally symmetric gradient Ricci soliton with positive sectional curvature. In this case the curvature falls off inverse linearly with the distance from some fixed point, and \(\omega(r)=O(r^{1/2})\), so the soliton opens like a paraboloid [\textit{T. Ivey}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 122, No. 1, 241--245 (1994; Zbl 0812.53045)]. In the paper under review the author uses level sets of the Ricci potential \(f\) to study general three-dimensional complete gradient Ricci solitons \((M^3,g)\) with positive sectional curvature, whose scalar curvature achieves a maximum at some point \(O \in M^3\). He shows that the area of level sets \(f^{-1}(\lambda)\) grows linearly in \(\lambda\), and the volume of sublevel sets \(f^{-1}[0,\lambda]\) grows quadratically in \(\lambda\). He further proves that the scalar curvature approaches zero at infinity. By studying the growth rate of the diameter of level sets, he finds that the tangent cone is a ray. He then proves that if one assumes that \({\mathbb R}^1 \times \Sigma^2\) cannot occur as a limit from dimension reduction, then the sectional curvatures decay inverse linearly with the distance from a fixed point, and the diameter of geodesic spheres increase like the square root of the distance, so it opens like a paraboloid.