On the existence of nontrivial extremal metrics on complete noncompact surfaces (Q1865570)

The author generalizes the existence of extremal metrics to the case of complete noncompact smooth surfaces which is served as a generalization of the classical uniformization theorem on a closed smooth surface to a complete noncompact surface. More precisely, for a complete noncompact smooth surface \(\Sigma\) with a fixed conformal class \([g_0]\), choose an exhaustion \(\{\Omega_i\}\) of compact domains in \(\Sigma\) with \(\Omega_j\subset\Omega_{j+1}\), \(\cup\Omega_j=\Sigma\). Then the 2-dimensional local Calabi flow \[ \left\{ \begin{aligned} &\frac{\partial\lambda}{\partial t}= \chi_i^4\left(\bigtriangleup R+\frac{1}{2}R^2- \frac{1}{2}r_i\right),\\ &\lambda_0(p)=\lambda(p,0)\in C^\infty(\Omega_i,d\mu_0),\quad g=e^{2\lambda}g_0,\quad \int_{\Omega_i}e^{2\lambda_0}d\mu_0=\int_{\Omega_i}d\mu_0 \end{aligned} \right. \] on \((\Sigma,[g_0])\) is considered, where \(\lambda:\Sigma\times[0,\infty)\rightarrow\mathbb R\), \(R\) is the scalar curvature with respect to the metric \(g\), \(r_i= \int_{\Omega_i}\chi_i^4(2\Delta R+2R^2) d\mu/ \int_{\Omega_i}\chi_i^4 d\mu,\) \(d\mu\) is the volume element associated with \(g\), and \(\chi_i\) is a nonnegative smooth compactly supported function on \(\Sigma\) with \(\chi_i\in C_0^\infty(\Omega_i)\), \(0\leq\chi_i\leq 1\). The key Bondy-mass type estimate is derived from the Bochner formula and bound of energy. Based on the Harnack-type theorem, it is shown the long-time existence and asymptotic convergence of a subsequence of solutions of such a flow on \((\Sigma, g_0)\) with \(R_0 \leq 0\) and \(R_0\) bounded from above by a negative constant on a ball. For its applications, this leads to the existence of extremal metrics on a complete noncompact smooth surface of finite topological type. In particular, there exists an extremal metric of nonconstant Gaussian curvature on \(\Sigma=\mathbb H^2\) or \(\mathbb R^2\).