Ricci flow smoothing for locally collapsing manifolds (Q2113315)

The theory of Ricci flows is a common tool to regularise Riemannian metrics by replacing the initially given Riemannian metric $g$ with the evolved metric $g(t)$. To use this tool effectively, it is crucial that the Ricci flow exists for a fixed period of time $T$. Many results on the existence of a lower bound for $T$ depend on the uniform volume ratio lower bound for the initial metric $g$. The authors of the current paper provide two theorems for the existence of the Ricci flow up to a fixed period of time without assuming a uniform volume ratio lower bound. The theorems are local in nature and require the Ricci curvature to be bounded from below. The first theorem is locally modelled on euclidean spaces; the second is locally modeled on flat orbifolds. As an application, the authors use their Ricci flow smoothing results to detect which collapsing manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded from below are infranil fibre bundles over controlled Riemannian orbifolds.