Uniqueness for Ricci flow with unbounded curvature in dimension 2 (Q708850)

The authors prove two uniqueness theorems for the Ricci flow on a complete noncompact 2-dimensional manifold with initial curvature bounded from above but not necessarily bounded from below. The Gaussian curvature \(K(0)\) of the initial surface \(\mathcal{M}\) with metric \(g(0)\) is assumed to satisfy \(K(0)\leq \bar{K}\), where \(\bar{K}\) is a real constant, and two solutions of the Ricci flow \(g_1(t)\) and \(g_2(t)\) are considered, defined on \(\mathcal{M}\times [0,T]\) with the same initial condition \(g(0)\), where \(0<T< +\infty\). The respective sectional curvatures are supposed to satisfy \(-\frac{1}{2t}\leq K_i(x,t)\leq \frac{1}{\bar{K}^{-1} -2t}\). This is a natural condition, for the existence of solutions satisfying this curvature condition has been proved by several authors. If \(\bar{K}\leq 0\), the authors prove that \(g_1(t)=g_2(t)\) holds for all \((x,t)\in \mathcal{M}\times [0,T]\), under the additional condition that there exists a constant \(C>0\) such that \(K_i(x,t) \geq -C\rho_0^2(p,x)\), \(i=1,2\), where \(\rho_0(p,x)\) is the \(g(0)\)-distance function from \(x\) to a fixed point \(p\). If \(\bar{K}>0\), \(T<\frac{\bar{K}^{-1}}{2}\), and \(K_i(x,t) \geq -C\log(1+\rho_0^2(p,x))\), \(i=1,2\), where \(C\) is any constant such that \(0<C<\frac{1}{4T}\), then the uniqueness also holds. A Calabi-Hopf maximum principle type result for linear parabolic operators is obtained, in the barrier sense, for continuous functions and used in the proofs. It is also derived an upper estimate for \(\Delta \rho\) ( in the barrier sense) at points of sufficiently large distance, for complete Riemannian manifolds with Ricci tensor bounded from below by \(-C\rho^2(p,x)\).