The inverse Monge-Ampère flow and applications to Kähler-Einstein metrics (Q2073270)

The authors study the inverse Monge-Ampère flow (\(MA^{-1}\)) on a compact Kähler manifold. It was first introduced by \textit{T. Mabuchi} [Tohoku Math. J. (2) 53, No. 2, 171--182 (2001; Zbl 1040.53084)]. Rewritten in terms of potentials the flow is a somewhat different version of the parabolic Monge-Ampère equation than the Kähler-Ricci flow: \[ \frac{d}{dt} \varphi = 1-e^{\rho} . \] Here \(\varphi\) is the evolving potential and \(\rho = \rho_{\varphi }\) is the normalized Ricci potential \[ \mathrm{Ric} \ \omega _{\varphi} -\lambda \omega _{\varphi}= dd^c \rho , \ \ \ \int _X e^{\rho_{\varphi } } \omega _{\varphi} ^n =\int _X \omega ,\] with \(\lambda\) determined by the first Chern class. It is shown that \(MA^{-1}\) is the gradient flow of the Ding functional. The main results include the following statements: -- In case of negative first Chern class (\(\lambda = -1\)), \(MA^{-1}\) exists for all time and converges smoothly to the Kähler-Einstein metric for any choice of the initial metric. -- In the Fano case (\(\lambda = 1\)), it exists for all time. If additionally there are no holomorphic vector fields and a K-E metric exists then the flow at the level of potentials converges to the K-E potential in \(L^p\) for any \(p\), and in so-called strong topology. In the presence of holomorphic vector fields the convergence is only in the sense of currents and modulo the action of the automorphism group. When there is no K-E metric on the manifold the authors seek to produce a maximally destabilizing degeneration using the flow. More precisely they expect that the limit of \(MA^{-1}\) flow is related with the optimally destabilizing test configuration for the \(L^2\)-normalized non-Archimedean Ding functional. This is confirmed for Ding-unstable toric Fano manifolds. The existence proofs use specific properties of the Ding functional (some of them first proven in this paper), the variation of the Ricci-Calabi energy, and some results on weak solutions of the Monge-Ampère equation. A very subtle analysis of the toric case builds, among other things, on recent results of \textit{S. Nakamura} [Tohoku Math. J. (2) 71, No. 4, 525--532 (2019; Zbl 1439.53047)] and \textit{Y. Yao} [``Mabuchi metrics and relative Ding stability of toric Fano varieties'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1701.04016}].