Estimate and monotonicity of the first eigenvalue under the Ricci flow (Q453419)

The problem of Ricci flow on compact two-dimensional manifolds was completely solved by \textit{R. S. Hamilton} [Contemp. Math. 71, 237--262 (1988; Zbl 0663.53031)] and \textit{B. Chow} [J. Differ. Geom. 33, No. 2, 325--334 (1991; Zbl 0734.53033)]. In Perelman's famous proofs of the three dimensional Poincaré conjecture and the Thurston conjecture, the monotony of certain functions played very important roles. In particular, he proved that the first eigenvalue of \(-4\Delta +R\) is nondecreasing along the Ricci flow, where \(R\) is the scalar curvature. In this paper, the authors prove some monotony properties for certain functions on some compact two dimensional surfaces along non-normalized or normalized Ricci flow. In particular, they prove that the first eigenvalue of \(-a\Delta +R\) for any \(a>0\) is nondecreasing if \(R\) is nonnegative. Notice that this only happens when the surface is a sphere or a torus; while when the surface is a torus, \(R=0\). There are also some physics interests on some earlier result of the first author, see [\textit{T. A. Oliynyk, V. Suneeta} and \textit{E. Woolgar}, Phys. Lett., B 610, No. 1--2, 115--121 (2005; Zbl 1247.81310)].