Singular Ricci flows. I (Q1699387)

A Ricci flow with a smooth initial condition can develop singularities without blowing up everywhere, so that the flow can be continued beyond the singular time. In this paper the authors introduce a notion of generalized solutions, called singular Ricci flows, to solve the problem of flowing through singularities in the 3-dimensional Ricci flow. The notion of singular Ricci flows derives partly from the work of \textit{R. S. Hamilton} [Commun. Anal. Geom. 5, No. 1, 1--92 (1997; Zbl 0892.53018)] and Perelman on Ricci flow with surgery, for which one refers to the authors' paper [Geom. Topol. 12, No. 5, 2587--2855 (2008; Zbl 1204.53033)]. They give the following definitions. Definition 1.2. A Ricci flow spacetime is a tuple \((\mathcal{M},\mathfrak{t}, \partial_{\mathfrak{t}}, g)\) where \(\bullet\) \(\mathcal{M}\) is a smooth manifold with boundary; \(\bullet\) \(\mathfrak{t}\) is a time function, i.e., a submersion \(\mathfrak{t}:\mathcal{M} \to I\), \(I\) is a time interval, usually \(I=[0,\infty)\); \(\bullet\) \(\partial\mathcal{M}=\mathfrak{t}^{-1}(\partial I)\), if it is non-empty; \(\bullet\) \(\partial_{\mathfrak{t}}\) is the time vector field satisfying \(\partial_{\mathfrak{t}}\mathfrak{t}=1\); \(\bullet\) \(g\) is a smooth inner product on the spacial sub-bundle \(\ker(d\mathfrak{t})\subset T\mathcal{M}\), and \(g\) defines a Ricci flow \(\mathcal{L}_{\partial_{\mathfrak{t}}g}=-2\text{Ric}(g)\). Definition 1.4. A Ricci flow spacetime \((\mathcal{M},\mathfrak{t}, \partial_{\mathfrak{t}}, g)\) is a singular Ricci flow if it is 4-dimensional, the initial time slice \(\mathcal{M}_0=\mathfrak{t}^{-1}(0)\) is a compact normalized Riemannian manifold and (1) the scalar curvature \(R:\mathcal{M}_{\leqslant T}\to \mathbb{R}\) is bounded below and proper for all \(T\geq 0\), where \(\mathcal{M}_{\leqslant T}=\mathfrak{t}^{-1}([0,T])\); (2) \(\mathcal{M}\) satisfies the Hamilton-Ivey pinching condition \(R\geq -\lambda_1(\log(-\lambda_1)+\log(1+t)-3)\) where \(\lambda_1(x,t)\) is the lowest eigenvalue of the curvature operator satisfying \(\lambda_1\leq -1/(1+t)\); (3) for a global parameter \(\varepsilon>0\) and decreasing functions \(\varkappa, r:[0,\infty)\to [0,\infty)\), the spacetime \(\mathcal{M}\) is \(\varkappa\)-non-collapsed below scale \(\varepsilon\) in the sense of \S A.4, and satisfies the \(r\)-canonical neighborhood assumption in the sense of \S A.8. The authors show that singular Ricci flows have a number of good properties, including a compactness result for families of spacetimes, and the following existence theorem. Theorem 1.1. For every compact Riemannian 3-manifold \(M\), there is a singular Ricci flow with initial condition \(M\). In addition they establish a number of structural results, such as Theorem 1.3, Theorem 1.11, Theorem 1.12, Theorem 7.1 and so on. This work is related to the question of whether there is a good notion of generalized solution to the Ricci flow equation. The results here show that singular Ricci flows give an answer in the 3-dimensional case, and in the 4-dimensional case under the assumption of non-negative isotropic curvature.