Ricci flow on contact manifolds (Q5963445)

The paper under review is devoted to the Ricci flow on contact manifolds. The authors use the Ricci flow and calculus of variations to obtain more information about contact manifolds. First the authors define the normalized and unnormalized contact curvature flows and establish a short-time existence of an unnormalized contact curvature flow. Also they prove that every solution of the unnormalized contact curvature flow can lead to a solution of the normalized contact curvature flow by a \(1\)-parameter family of diffeomorphisms and vice versa. Then, the contact Ricci soliton is defined and the following intersting results about it are proved: {\parindent=0.6cm \begin{itemize}\item[(a)] Every solution of the unnormalized contact curvature flow is a selfsimilar solution corresponding to a contact Ricci soliton which is a steady soliton. \item[(b)] A time-dependent family of contact Einstein, Sasakian, \(K\)-contact or \( \eta\)-Einstein \(1\)-forms \(\eta_t\) is a solution of the normalized contact curvature flow if it is a conformal variation of an initial 1-form \(\eta_0\). \end{itemize}}