Combinatorial Ricci flows and the hyperbolization of a class of compact 3-manifolds (Q2674452)

Thurston conjectured that all compact hyperbolic 3-manifolds can be geometrically triangulated; in the present paper, under some combinatorial assumptions, the conjecture is confirmed for manifolds with higher genus boundary components. The main theorem is the following. Let \(M\) be a compact 3-manifold with boundary components consisting of surfaces of genus at least 2. If \(M\) admits an ideal triangulation \(\mathcal{T}\) with valence at least 10 at all edges, then there exists a unique complete hyperbolic metric on \(M\) with totally geodesic boundary, so that \(\mathcal{T}\) is isotopic to a geometric decomposition of \(M\). ``For a compact triangulated 3-manifold with boundary consisting of surfaces of negative Euler characteristic, \textit{F. Luo} [Electron. Res. Announc. Am. Math. Soc. 11, 12--20 (2005; Zbl 1079.53098)] introduced a combinatorial Ricci flow on the set of edges in order to find the complete hyperbolic metric with totally geodesic boundary on the manifold. We study a variant Ricci flow analogous to Luo's combinatorial Ricci flow and prove the existence of the polyhedral metric with zero curvature on edges under some combinatorial conditions.'' Also, ``we prove that the extended Ricci flow converges to the hyperbolic metric exponentially fast.''