Singularities of Ricci flow and diffeomorphisms

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Colding, Tobias Holck, Minicozzi II, William P.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912593068687360
author Colding, Tobias Holck
Minicozzi II, William P.
author_facet Colding, Tobias Holck
Minicozzi II, William P.
contents Comparing and recognizing metrics can be extraordinarily difficult because of the group of diffeomorphisms. Two metrics, that could even be the same, could look completely different in different coordinates. This is the gauge problem. The general gauge problem is extremely subtle for non-compact spaces. Often it can be avoided if one uses some additional structure of the particular situation. However, in many problems there is no additional structure. Instead we solve the gauge problem directly in great generality. The techniques and ideas apply to many problems. We use them to solve a well-known open problem in Ricci flow: Strong rigidity of cylinders. Strong rigidity is an illustration of a {\it shrinker principle} that uniqueness radiates out from a compact set. It implies that if one tangent flow at a future singular point is a cylinder, then all tangent flows are. We solve the gauge problem by solving a nonlinear system of PDEs. The PDE produces a diffeomorphism that fixes an appropriate gauge in the spirit of the slice theorem for group actions. We then show optimal bounds for the displacement function of the diffeomorphism. Strong rigidity relies on gauge fixing and several other new ideas. One of these is "propagation of almost splitting", another is quadratic rigidity in the right gauge, and a third is an optimal polynomial growth bound for PDEs that holds in great generality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2109_06240
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Singularities of Ricci flow and diffeomorphisms
Colding, Tobias Holck
Minicozzi II, William P.
Differential Geometry
Analysis of PDEs
Comparing and recognizing metrics can be extraordinarily difficult because of the group of diffeomorphisms. Two metrics, that could even be the same, could look completely different in different coordinates. This is the gauge problem. The general gauge problem is extremely subtle for non-compact spaces. Often it can be avoided if one uses some additional structure of the particular situation. However, in many problems there is no additional structure. Instead we solve the gauge problem directly in great generality. The techniques and ideas apply to many problems. We use them to solve a well-known open problem in Ricci flow: Strong rigidity of cylinders. Strong rigidity is an illustration of a {\it shrinker principle} that uniqueness radiates out from a compact set. It implies that if one tangent flow at a future singular point is a cylinder, then all tangent flows are. We solve the gauge problem by solving a nonlinear system of PDEs. The PDE produces a diffeomorphism that fixes an appropriate gauge in the spirit of the slice theorem for group actions. We then show optimal bounds for the displacement function of the diffeomorphism. Strong rigidity relies on gauge fixing and several other new ideas. One of these is "propagation of almost splitting", another is quadratic rigidity in the right gauge, and a third is an optimal polynomial growth bound for PDEs that holds in great generality.
title Singularities of Ricci flow and diffeomorphisms
topic Differential Geometry
Analysis of PDEs
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.06240