Convergence of the \(J\)-flow on Kähler surfaces (Q1769354)

In the Kähler setting, Donaldson used the framework of diffeomorphisms groups and moment maps to define a natural parabolic flow. The same flow was discovered by Chen as being the gradient flow of a functional which is related to Mabuchi's \(K\)-energy. It was named \(J\)-flow, since the defining functional was denoted by \(J\). Let \(\left( M, \omega \right) \) be a \(n\)-dimensional compact Kähler manifold and \(\chi _{0}\) another Kähler form on \(M\), in a different Kähler class. Let \(c\) be the constant defined by \(c=\frac{\int_{M}\omega \wedge \chi _{0}^{n-1}}{\int_{M}\chi _{0}^{n}}\). The manifold \({\mathcal M}\) of diffeomorphisms of \(M\), homotopic to the identity, carries a natural symplectic form \(\Omega \). The group \({\mathcal G}\) of exact \(\chi _{0}\)-symplectomorphisms of \(M\) acts on \({\mathcal M}\) by composition on the right, preserving \(\Omega \). A moment map \(\mu \) is defined on \({\mathcal M}\). The \(J\)-flow is defined on the space of Kähler potentials. A critical point of the \(J\)-flow gives a Kähler metric \(\chi \) satisfying the equation \(\Omega \wedge \chi ^{n-1}=c\cdot \chi ^{n}\). Donaldson remarked that the solution \(\chi \) belongs to \([ \chi _{0}] \) if, necessarily, \(\left[ nc\chi _{0}-\omega \right] \) is a Kähler class and conjectured that this condition is sufficient. In case \(n=2\) this conjecture was confirmed by Chen without using the \(J\)-flow. The conjecture is still open for \(n>2\). Chen proved that the \(J\)-flow converges to a critical metric if the bisectional curvature of \(\omega \) is non-negative. In this paper, the author deals with the case \(n=2\) with no curvature restrictions. The main result is: If \((M,\omega) \) has dimension \(n=2\) and if \(nc\chi _{0}-\omega >0\), then the corresponding \(J\)-flow converges in \(C^{\infty }\) to a smooth critical metric.