The canonical shrinking soliton associated to a Ricci flow (Q662836)

This paper concerns the Ricci flow on Riemannian manifolds. Inspired by ideas of G. Perelman, the authors prove the following statement: Theorem. Suppose \(g(t)\) is a reverse Ricci flow, i.e., a solution of \(\frac{\partial g}{\partial t} = \text{Ric}_{g}\), defined for \(t\in (a,b)\subset \mathbb{R}_+\), on a manifold \(M^n\) with bounded curvature. Suppose \(N\in\mathbb{N}\) is sufficiently large to give a positive definite metric \(\hat g\) on \(\hat M = M\times (a,b)\) defined by \[ \hat g_{ij} = \frac{1}{t}g_{ij},\quad \hat g_{00}= \frac{N}{2\tau^3}+\frac{R}{\tau}-\frac{n}{2\tau^2}, \quad \hat g_{0i} = 0, \] where \(i\), \(j\) are coordinate indices on \(M\), \(0\) represents the index of the time coordinate \(t\in (a,b)\), and \(R\) is the scalar curvature of \(g\). Then, up to errors of order \(1/N\), the metric \(\hat g\) is a gradient shrinking Ricci soliton on the manifold \(\hat M\): \[ \text{Ric}_{\hat g} + \text{Hess}_{\hat g} \left(\frac{N}{2t}\right) \simeq \frac{1}{2}\hat g. \] This means that the quantity \[ N\left[ \text{Ric}_{\hat g} + \text{Hess}_{\hat g} \left(\frac{N}{2t}\right) - \frac{1}{2}\hat g\right] \] is locally bounded independently of \(N\) with respect to any fixed metric on \(\hat M\). The proof is based on methods of the theory of optimal transportation (cf. [\textit{R. J. McCann} and \textit{P. M. Topping}, Am. J. Math. 132, No. 3, 711--730 (2010; Zbl 1203.53065); \textit{P. Topping}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 636, 93--122 (2009; Zbl 1187.53072); \textit{J. Lott}, Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 36, No. 1, 49--84 (2009; Zbl 1171.53318)]).