Curvature flow to the Nirenberg problem (Q2380751)

This paper studies the natural curvature flow associated to the Nirenberg problem. This problem consists in characterizing the smooth functions \(K\) on the sphere \(S^2\) which can be the scalar curvature of a Riemannian metric conformal to the round metric. While there are many necessary conditions on \(K\), such as the Kazdan-Warner identity, and many sufficient ones, such as the result of Moser when \(K\) has antipodal symmetry, no general necessary and sufficient condition on \(K\) is known to this day. \textit{M. Struwe} [Duke Math. J. 128, No. 1, 19--64 (2005; Zbl 1087.53034)] was the first to consider the natural parabolic flow associated to this problem, which is a close cousin of the Yamabe flow. There he showed long time existence and convergence of the flow assuming that \(K>0\), with only nondegenerate critical points, with at least two local maxima, and such that at all saddle points of \(K\) the Laplacian of \(K\) is positive. In this paper the authors extend this result to the case when \(K\geq 0\).