The Ricci flow as a geodesic on the manifold of Riemannian metrics (Q505330)

Let \((M,g_0)\) be a smooth compact Riemannian manifold and \(\mathfrak{M}\) be the space of all smooth Riemannian metrics on \(M\). The geometry of this space has been studied at first by \textit{D. G. Ebin} [in: Global Analysis, Proc. Sympos. Pure Math. 15, 11--40 (1970; Zbl 0205.53702)]. The manifold of Riemannian metrics \(\mathfrak{M}\) is the subset of all sections in \(S^2T^*M\) of symmetric rank-2 covariant tensor fields that are positive definite on each \(T_xM\) for \(x\in M\), and \(\mathfrak{M}\) is an open convex positive cone in \(\Gamma(S^2T^*M)\), which is an infinite-dimensional Fréchet manifold with canonical \(L^2\) Riemannian metric. Using a pseudo-differential operator we can introduce the following general Sobolev metrics on \(\mathfrak{M}\): \(G_g^p(h,k) = \int_M g_0(P_gh,k)\) \(\mathrm{vol}(g_0),\) where \(P_g:\Gamma(S^2T^*M)\to \Gamma(S^2T^*M)\) is a positive, symmetric, bijective pseudo-differential operator of order \(2p\), \(p\geq 0\), depending smoothly on the metric \(g\in \mathfrak{M}\). The Ricci flow is an evolution equation in the space of Riemannian metrics: \(\frac{\partial}{\partial t}g(t) = - 2\) \(\mathrm{Ric}(g(t))\), \(g(0)=g_0\), where \(\mathrm{Ric}(g(t))\) denotes the Ricci curvature of the metric \(g(t)\). A solution for this equation is a curve on the space \(\mathfrak{M}\) of Riemannian metrics. In this paper, the authors show that there is a pseudo-differential operator \(P_g\) on \(\Gamma(S^2T^*M)\) such that the Ricci flow is a geodesic of the metric \(G_g^p\) on the manifold of Riemannian metrics \(\mathfrak{M}\). The authors also show that the Ricci solitons introduce a special slice on the manifold of Riemannian metrics.