Relative volume comparison of Ricci flow (Q2236585)

Perelman's nonlocal collapsing theorem is a crucial step in his work on Ricci flow on three-manifold. The purpose of this paper is to refine Perelman's nonlocal collapsing estimate and prove a relative volume comparison theorem of Ricci flow. Precisely, for any \(A>0\) and dimension \(m\) there exists \(\kappa=\kappa(m,A)>0\) with the following property: let \(g(t), t\in [0, r_0^2]\) be a smooth solution of Ricci flow on a closed \(m\)-manifold \(M\) with \(|\mathrm{Ric}|\leq r_0^{-2}\) on the parabolic domain \(B_{g(r_0^2)}(x_0,r_0)\times [0,r_0^2]\). Then for any metric ball \(B_{g(r_0^2)}(x,r)\subset B_{g(r_0^2)}(x_0,Ar_0)\) with \(\mathrm{R}(\cdot, r_0^2)\leq r^{-2}\) in \(B_{g(r_0^2)}(x,r)\), the following relative volume comparison at time \(r_0^2\) holds: \[ \frac{\mathrm{vol}_{g(r_0^2)}(B_{g(r_0^2)}(x,r))}{r^m}\geq \kappa \frac{\mathrm{vol}_{g(r_0^2)}(B_{g(r_0^2)}(x_0,r_0))}{r_0^m} \] The main improvement of this result is that no non-collapsing condition for the initial metric is required and so that it can be applied to Ricci flow with a collapsing structure. The key ingredient in the proof is the Li-Yau type lower bound on the conjugate heat kernel of Ricci flow.