The Kähler Ricci flow on Fano manifolds. I (Q690844)

The famous Calabi conjecture states that if a Kähler manifold \(M\) has a positive, null, or negative first Chern class \(c_1(M)\) then \(M\) admits a Kähler-Einstein (KE) metric. The negative and null cases were proven in the late 1970s by S. T. Yau and T. Aubin. The positive case (corresponding to Fano manifolds) turns out to be much more complicated. G. Tian proved in 1988 the Calabi conjecture for Fano surfaces with reductive automorphism groups. The reductivity of the automorphism group is a necessary condition for the existence of the KE metric by the result of Matsushima. For a Fano Kähler manifold \(M\) of dimension \(n\), the paper under review studies the convergence of the Kähler Ricci flow \(\{(M,\omega_t), \; 0\leq t < \infty \}\) tamed by \(\nu\) (for an integer \(\nu\) such that \(K_M^{-\nu}\) is very ample). Two main criteria for the convergence of the flow are given in terms of the so called local \(\alpha\) invariants \(\alpha_{\nu,1}\) and \(\alpha_{\nu,2}\) defined in complex algebraic geometry. These two criteria prove that the corresponding compatible metric \(g_t\) converges to a KE metric exceptionally fast if respectively \(\alpha_{\nu,1} > n/(n+1)\) and \[ \alpha_{\nu,2}>\frac{n}{n+1}, \quad \alpha_{\nu,1}> \frac{1}{2-\frac{n-1}{(n+1)\alpha_{\nu,2}}}. \] As applications it is proven that the Kähler Ricci flow is convergent on Fano surfaces \(M\) with \(c_1(M)^2\leq 4\), and moreover the existence of KE metrics is established when \(c_1(M)^2=1\) or \(3\). Combining this with previous results of the authors gives another proof of the above-mentioned Tian's theorem.