Classification of ancient compact solutions to the Ricci flow on surfaces (Q713187)

The article considers an ancient solution of the Ricci flow \(\frac{\partial g_{ij}}{\partial t}=-2R_{ij}\) on a compact surface that exists for \(t\in(-\infty,T)\) and becomes spherical at time \(t=T\) with \(T<\infty\). In this case the Ricci flow can be parametrized by \(g(\cdot,t)=u(\cdot,t)g_{S^2}\), where \(g_{S^2}\) denotes the spherical metric on \(S^2\). The authors prove that the metric \(g(\cdot,t)\) is either a family of contracting spheres (type I ancient solution) or a King-Rosenau solution (type II ancient solution). Together with the classification of two-dimensional, complete, non-compact ancient solutions from [\textit{P. Daskalopoulos} and \textit{N. Nesum}, Int. Math. Res. Not. 2006, No. 22, Article ID 83610, 20 p. (2006; Zbl 1127.53057); \textit{S. Chu}, Commun. Anal. Geom. 15, No. 1, 195--216 (2007;Zbl 1120.53040)], a full classification of all ancient two-dimensional complete solutions of the Ricci flow, with scalar curvature uniformly bounded at each time slice, is obtained. First of all, the authors derive a priori estimates for the pressure function \(v=u^{-1}\). Making use of a Lyapunov type functional and the a priori estimates derived before, the convergence of the pressure function \(v\) is ensured. Afterwards the possible backward limits \(v_\infty\) are classified by showing that \(v_\infty\) is either identically equal to zero or has at most two zeros. Using this information on the backward limit, the last part of the article then gives the desired classification result. The important ingredients here are the vanishing of a certain function \(Q\) associated to the King-Rosenau solution or an isoperimetric estimate for the contracting sphere solution, respectively.