On stability and the convergence of the Kähler-Ricci flow (Q2496581)

The normalized Kähler-Ricci flow exists for all times, and converges when the first Chern class is negative or zero. However, when the first Chern class is positive, there are very few known cases of convergence. In higher dimensions, convergence was established only in the case of positive biholomorphic sectional curvatures, first by X. X. Chen and Tian using Liouville energy functionals, and then by Cao, B. L. Chen, and Zhu using the recent injectivity radius bound of Perelman. According to a well-known conjecture of S. T. Yau, the existence of a Kähler-Einstein metric should be equivalent to the stability of the Kähler manifold in the sence of geometric invariant theory. It is an important problem to relate stability to the convergence of the Kähler-Ricci flow. In this paper the authors take a first step in this direction. Assuming uniform bounds for the curvature, the exponential convergence of the Kähler-Ricci flow is established under two conditions which are a form of stability: the Mabuchi energy is bounded from below, and the dimension of the space of holomorphic vector fields in an orbit of the diffeomorphism group cannot jump up in the limit.