Collapsing immortal Kähler-Ricci flows (Q6977088)

This paper combines two prominent themes in Kähler geometry: the study of limits of Kähler manifolds of the form \((X,\omega(t))\), where the \(\omega(t)\) are Ricci-flat metrics (i.e., Calabi-Yau manifolds). Secondly, the study of the (normalised) Kähler-Ricci flow: the evolution equation \N\[\N\frac{\partial}{\partial t} \omega(t) = -\mathrm{Ric}( \omega(t)) - \omega(t).\N\]\NIn many ways, the former can be viewed as an elliptic version of the latter, though the geometric settings are distinct: the Kähler-Ricci flow happening in the paper under review is on a manifold with semiample canonical class, whereas Calabi-Yau by definition means trivial canonical class. Nevertheless, there are many connections between the stories, not least because in the former a dominant theme is to consider resulting fibration structures, where the fibres become Calabi-Yau, which also appear heavily in the latter story.\N\NIn particular, given \(X\) with canonical class semiample, there is a natural fibration \(X\to X_{\mathrm{can}}\) onto its canonical model, which may be singular but has ample canonical class. These structures are very prominent in birational geometry. The fibres of such fibrations are generically Calabi-Yau, but some fibres may also be singular. Notably since work of \textit{J. Song} and \textit{G. Tian} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 25, No. 2, 303--353 (2012; Zbl 1239.53086)] it has been a main goal of Kähler geometry to prove precise results concerning the metric geometry of the morphism \(X\to X_{\mathrm{can}}\).\N\NReturning to the Calabi-Yau setting, work of the first and third authors gives a fairly complete understanding of what happens away from the singular locus [\textit{H.-J. Hein} and \textit{V. Tosatti}, Camb. J. Math. 8, No. 4, 683--773 (2020; Zbl 1469.32020); Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 78, No. 2, 382--499 (2025; Zbl 1564.32038)], giving a complete asymptotic expansion for the Calabi-Yau metrics in the collapsing situations they consider, and further giving certain bounds on the behaviour near singularities. Essentially, the paper under review proves parabolic versions of these prior elliptic results: the authors obtain precise asymptotic expansions away from the singular locus for the solution of the Kähler-Ricci flow, away from the singular locus, and further obtain coarser information concerning the behaviour near singularities.