Ricci flow does not preserve positive sectional curvature in dimension four (Q2093429)

An important problem in geometric analysis is to understand how the curvature changes when a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) evolves under the Ricci flow governed by \(\frac{\partial}{\partial t}g(t) = -2\mathrm{Ric}_{g(t)}\), \(g(0)=g\). The paper focuses on understanding whether the condition \(\mathrm{sec}>0\) (sec denotes the sectional curvature) is preserved or not. \textit{R. S. Hamilton} [J. Differ. Geom. 17, 255--306 (1982; Zbl 0504.53034)] proved this is true in dimension bigger than or equal to 3. On the other hand, there are examples of homogeneous metrics on flag manifolds of dimensions 6, 12, and 24 with \(\mathrm{sec} > 0\) that lose that property when evolved via Ricci flow. The authors show that there exist Riemannian metrics with positive sectional curvature on \(S^4\) and \(\mathbb{CP}^2\) that evolve under the Ricci flow to metrics with sectional curvatures of mixed sign.