The Ricci Flow Techniques And Applications

Geometric analysis has become one of the most important tools in geometry and topology. In their books on the Ricci flow, the authors reveal the depth and breadth of this flow method for understanding the structure of manifolds. With the present book, the authors focus on the analytic aspects of Ricci flow.

The Ricci flow uses methods from analysis to study the geometry and topology of manifolds. With the third part of their volume on techniques and applications of the theory, the authors give a presentation of Hamilton's Ricci flow for graduate students and mathematicians interested in working in the subject, with an emphasis on the geometric and analytic aspects. The topics include Perelman's entropy functional, point picking methods, aspects of Perelman's theory of $\kappa$-solutions including the $\kappa$-gap theorem, compactness theorem and derivative estimates, Perelman's pseudolocality theorem, and aspects of the heat equation with respect to static and evolving metrics related to Ricci flow. In the appendices, we review metric and Riemannian geometry including the space of points at infinity and Sharafutdinov retraction for complete noncompact manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature. As in the previous volumes, the authors have endeavored, as much as possible, to make the chapters independent of each other. The book makes advanced material accessible to graduate students and nonexperts. It includes a rigorous introduction to some of Perelman's work and explains some technical aspects of Ricci flow useful for singularity analysis. The authors give the appropriate references so that the reader may further pursue the statements and proofs of the various results.

The Ricci flow uses methods from analysis to study the geometry and topology of manifolds. With the third part of their volume on techniques and applications of the theory, the authors give a presentation of Hamilton's Ricci flow for graduate students and mathematicians interested in working in the subject, with an emphasis on the geometric and analytic aspects. The topics include Perelman's entropy functional, point picking methods, aspects of Perelman's theory of $\kappa$-solutions including the $\kappa$-gap theorem, compactness theorem and derivative estimates, Perelman's pseudolocality theorem, and aspects of the heat equation with respect to static and evolving metrics related to Ricci flow. In the appendices, we review metric and Riemannian geometry including the space of points at infinity and Sharafutdinov retraction for complete noncompact manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature. As in the previous volumes, the authors have endeavored, as much as possible, to make the chapters independent of each other. The book makes advanced material accessible to graduate students and nonexperts. It includes a rigorous introduction to some of Perelman's work and explains some technical aspects of Ricci flow useful for singularity analysis. The authors give the appropriate references so that the reader may further pursue the statements and proofs of the various results.

This book gives a presentation of topics in Hamilton's Ricci flow for graduate students and mathematicians interested in working in the subject. The authors have aimed at presenting technical material in a clear and detailed manner. In this volume, geometric aspects of the theory have been emphasized. The book presents the theory of Ricci solitons, Kahler-Ricci flow, compactness theorems, Perelman's entropy monotonicity and no local collapsing, Perelman's reduced distance function and applications to ancient solutions, and a primer of 3-manifold topology. Various technical aspects of Ricci flow have been explained in a clear and detailed manner. The authors have tried to make some advanced material accessible to graduate students and nonexperts. The book gives a rigorous introduction to Perelman's work and explains technical aspects of Ricci flow useful for singularity analysis. Throughout, there are appropriate references so that the reader may further pursue the statements and proofs of the various results.

Ricci flow is a powerful technique using a heat-type equation to deform Riemannian metrics on manifolds to better metrics in the search for geometric decompositions. With the fourth part of their volume on techniques and applications of the theory, the authors discuss long-time solutions of the Ricci flow and related topics. In dimension 3, Perelman completed Hamilton's program to prove Thurston's geometrization conjecture. In higher dimensions the Ricci flow has remarkable properties, which indicates its usefulness to understand relations between the geometry and topology of manifolds. This book discusses recent developments on gradient Ricci solitons, which model the singularities developing under the Ricci flow. In the shrinking case there is a surprising rigidity which suggests the likelihood of a well-developed structure theory. A broader class of solutions is ancient solutions; the authors discuss the beautiful classification in dimension 2. In higher dimensions they consider both ancient and singular Type I solutions, which must have shrinking gradient Ricci soliton models. Next, Hamilton's theory of 3-dimensional nonsingular solutions is presented, following his original work. Historically, this theory initially connected the Ricci flow to the geometrization conjecture. From a dynamical point of view, one is interested in the stability of the Ricci flow. The authors discuss what is known about this basic problem. Finally, they consider the degenerate neckpinch singularity from both the numerical and theoretical perspectives. This book makes advanced material accessible to researchers and graduate students who are interested in the Ricci flow and geometric evolution equations and who have a knowledge of the fundamentals of the Ricci flow.

The Ricci flow is a powerful technique that integrates geometry, topology, and analysis. Intuitively, the idea is to set up a PDE that evolves a metric according to its Ricci curvature. The resulting equation has much in common with the heat equation, which tends to 'flow' a given function to ever nicer functions. By analogy, the Ricci flow evolves an initial metric into improved metrics. Richard Hamilton began the systematic use of the Ricci flow in the early 1980s and applied it in particular to study 3-manifolds. Grisha Perelman has made recent breakthroughs aimed at completing Hamilton's program. The Ricci flow method is now central to our understanding of the geometry and topology of manifolds.This book is an introduction to that program and to its connection to Thurston's geometrization conjecture. The authors also provide a 'Guide for the hurried reader', to help readers wishing to develop, as efficiently as possible, a nontechnical appreciation of the Ricci flow program for 3-manifolds, i.e., the so-called 'fast track'. The book is suitable for geometers and others who are interested in the use of geometric analysis to study the structure of manifolds. "The Ricci Flow" was nominated for the 2005 Robert W. Hamilton Book Award, which is the highest honor of literary achievement given to published authors at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ricci flow is a powerful analytic method for studying the geometry and topology of manifolds. This book is an introduction to Ricci flow for graduate students and mathematicians interested in working in the subject. To this end, the first chapter is a review of the relevant basics of Riemannian geometry. For the benefit of the student, the text includes a number of exercises of varying difficulty. The book also provides brief introductions to some general methods of geometric analysis and other geometric flows. Comparisons are made between the Ricci flow and the linear heat equation, mean curvature flow, and other geometric evolution equations whenever possible. Several topics of Hamilton's program are covered, such as short time existence, Harnack inequalities, Ricci solitons, Perelman's no local collapsing theorem, singularity analysis, and ancient solutions. A major direction in Ricci flow, via Hamilton's and Perelman's works, is the use of Ricci flow as an approach to solving the Poincaré conjecture and Thurston's geometrization conjecture.

This book focuses on Hamilton's Ricci flow, beginning with a detailed discussion of the required aspects of differential geometry, progressing through existence and regularity theory, compactness theorems for Riemannian manifolds, and Perelman's noncollapsing results, and culminating in a detailed analysis of the evolution of curvature, where recent breakthroughs of Böhm and Wilking and Brendle and Schoen have led to a proof of the differentiable 1/4-pinching sphere theorem.