Local control on the geometry in 3D Ricci flow (Q6158162)

This paper is concerned with proving certain curvature and volume bounds for Ricci flows in dimension three. A Ricci flow is a family of metrics \(\left\{g\left(t\right)\right\}_{t \in \left[0,T\right)}\) such that \(\partial_t g\left(t\right) = -2 \mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(t\right)\right)\). \textit{G. Perelman} [``The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:math/0211159}]) and \textit{G. Tian} and \textit{B. Wang} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 28, No. 4, 1169--1209 (2015; Zbl 1320.53052)] proved results on the local geometry such as a pseudolocality theorem: provided the regions are ``almost Euclidean'', then for short times the norm of the Riemann curvature is bounded above by \(\frac{\alpha}{t}\) for some \(\alpha > 0\). By ``almost Euclidean'', we mean that the Ricci curvature is almost non-negative and the volume of the unit ball is almost that of the Euclidean unit ball. The present paper proves such a curvature bound under more general assumptions. Specifically, the authors show that for complete \(3\)-dimensional Ricci flows with bounded curvature, if one assumes, for some \(\sigma, K, v_0 > 0\), that \begin{align*} \mathrm{Vol}_{g\left(0\right)}\left(B_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x_0,1\right(0\right) &\geq v_0 > 0,\\ \mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(0\right)\right) &\geq -K, \end{align*} where the curvature bound holds on \(B_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x_0,1+\sigma\right)\), then for all \(t \in \left[0, \max\left\{T,T'\right\}\right]\) \begin{align*} \mathrm{Vol}_{g\left(t\right)}\left(B_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x_0,1\right(t\right) &\geq \tilde{v}_0 > 0,\\ \mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(t\right)\right) &\geq -\tilde{K},\\ \left|\mathrm{Rm}\right|_{g\left(t\right)} &\leq \frac{c_0}{t}, \end{align*} where the curvature bounds hold on the unit ball \(B_{g\left(t\right)}\left(x_0,1\right)\) and \(\tilde{K},\tilde{v}_0, c_0 > 0\).\\ This result is restricted to dimension \(3\) (and lower) as lower bounds on the Ricci curvature are not necessarily preserved in higher dimensions (see, for instance, [\textit{R. G. Bettiol} and \textit{A. M. Krishnan}, Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 62, No. 1, Paper No. 13, 21 p. (2023; Zbl 1508.53046)]). On the other hand, as the authors remark, blow-downs of the Eguchi-Hanson metric yield counterexamples to this theorem in higher dimensions. The strategy of the proof is the following: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] Prove the bound \(\left|\mathrm{Rm}\right|_{g\left(t\right)} \leq \frac{c_0}{t}\) if \(\mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(t\right)\right) \geq -K\) for all times and \(\mathrm{Vol}_{g\left(0\right)}\left(B_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x_0,1\right(0\right) \geq v_0\). This is done by using a point picking argument in the spirit of Perelman's work. \item[2.] Prove \(\mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(t\right)\right) \geq -K\) for all times if \(\mathrm{Ric}\left(g\left(0\right)\right) -K\) and \(\left|\mathrm{Rm}\right|_{g\left(t\right)} \leq \frac{c_0}{t}\). This is done by a non-standard ``double bootstrapping'' argument. \item[3.] Prove such lower bounds on the Ricci curvature and upper bounds on the Riemann curvature yield control on a lower bound of the volume of small enough balls. \end{itemize} These are all local results, and the authors combine them to prove the full theorem. Some other ingredients/results include control on the lower bound of the volume of balls and showing that balls of certain radii are comparable at different times (controlled expansion/shrinkage). As a consequence of the main theorem, the authors are able to get good control, in a small region, of the distance function for all times \(t \in \left[0, \max\left\{T,T'\right\}\right]\): \[ d_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x,y\right) - \kappa \sqrt{t} \leq d_{g\left(t\right)}\left(x,y\right) \leq \left(1 + \kappa t\right) d_{g\left(0\right)}\left(x,y\right), \] where \(\kappa > 0\) is a constant. Also, the paper gives a way to make sense of Ricci flows of arbitrary Gromov-Hausdorff limits. The authors develop this further in the companion paper [Geom. Topol. 25, 913--948 (2021; Zbl 1470.53083)] to resolve a conjecture of Anderson-Cheeger-Colding-Tian, which is related to the structure of certain Ricci limit spaces.