Long-time behavior of 3-dimensional Ricci flow: introduction (Q680295)

This paper is the first of a series of five papers in which the author presents the long-time behaviour of 3-dimensional Ricci flows with surgery. Perelman used Ricci flow with surgery to solve the Poincare and geometrization conjectures. The main results of these papers confirm a conjecture of Perelman. In the course of the proofs the author obtains a qualitative description of the geometry as \(t\) goes to infinity. The introduction contains the statement of main results and outlines the proofs (more detailed explanations of specific aspects of the proofs are in the introductions of the subsequent four papers). The structure of the following four papers is: [A] Generalizations of Perelman's long-time estimates, [B] Evolution of the minimal area of simplicial complexes under Ricci flow, [C] 3-manifold topology and combinatorics of simplicial complexes in 3-manifolds, [D] Proof of the main results. Each of the papers [Zbl 1388.53058; Zbl 1388.53059; Zbl 1388.53060] is self-explanatory and the last paper [Zbl 1388.53061] make use of the results from the former three papers.