A pinching estimate for solutions of the linearized Ricci flow system on 3-manifolds (Q1776564)

The authors study the Ricci flow \(\frac{\partial}{\partial t}g_{ij}=-2R_{ij}\) on a closed 3-manifold \(M\) coupled to the Lichnerowicz Laplacian heat equation \[ \frac{\partial}{\partial t}h_{ij} = \Delta h_{ij} +R_{kijl}h_{kl}-R_{ik}h_{kj}-R_{jk}h_{ki}, \] which is the linearized Ricci flow system and arises from linearizing the Ricci flow using a version of De Turck's trick. Now let \((M^3,g(t))\) be a solution to the Ricci flow on a finite time interval \([0,T)\), let \(R(t)\) denote the scalar curvature of \(g(t)\), \(R_{\text{min}}(t)\) be the minimum of \(R(0)\) and \(\rho \in [0,\infty ]\) such that \(R_{\text{min}}(0)>-\rho\). The main theorem of the paper provides an estimate for \(\frac{| h| ^2}{(R+\rho )^2}\), where \((g,h)\) is any solution to the linearized Ricci flow system. By direct application of the maximum principle this estimate yields \[ | h| \leq C (R+\rho ) \;\;\;\;\;\;\;\; \text{on} \;\; M\times [0,T) , \] with a constant \(C\) only depending on \(g(0)\), \(\rho\) and \(T\).