Uniqueness of the Ricci Flow on Complete Noncompact Manifolds

The Ricci flow is an evolution system on metrics. For a given metric as initial data, its local existence and uniqueness on compact manifolds was first established by Hamilton \cite{Ha1}. Later on, De Turck \cite{De} gave a simplified proof. In the later of 80's, Shi \cite{Sh1} generalized the local existence result to complete noncompact manifolds. However, the uniqueness of the solutions to the Ricci flow on complete noncompact manifolds is still an open question. Recently it was found that the uniqueness of the Ricci flow on complete noncompact manifolds is important in the theory of the Ricci flow with surgery. In this paper, we give an affirmative answer for the uniqueness question. More precisely, we prove that the solution of the Ricci flow with bounded curvature on a complete noncompact manifold is unique.Comment: 33 pages (Previous version has some typing errors, the present one is correct.

On a new definition of Ricci curvature on Alexandrov spaces

Recently, in [49], a new definition for lower Ricci curvature bounds on Alexandrov spaces was introduced by the authors. In this article, we extend our research to summarize the geometric and analytic results under this Ricci condition. In particular, two new results, the rigidity result of Bishop-Gromov volume comparison and Lipschitz continuity of heat kernel, are obtained.Comment: Clarify a citation on page 20, add 2 reference

Ricci Curvature on Alexandrov spaces and Rigidity Theorems

In this paper, we introduce a new notion for lower bounds of Ricci curvature on Alexandrov spaces, and extend Cheeger-Gromoll splitting theorem and Cheng's maximal diameter theorem to Alexandrov spaces under this Ricci curvature condition.Comment: final versio

Lipschitz continuity of harmonic maps between Alexandrov spaces

In 1997, J. Jost [27] and F. H. Lin [39], independently proved that every energy minimizing harmonic map from an Alexandrov space with curvature bounded from below to an Alexandrov space with non-positive curvature is locally H\"older continuous. In [39], F. H. Lin proposed a challenge problem: Can the H\"older continuity be improved to Lipschitz continuity? J. Jost also asked a similar problem about Lipschitz regularity of harmonic maps between singular spaces (see Page 38 in [28]). The main theorem of this paper gives a complete resolution to it.Comment: We remove the assumption in the previous version that the domain space has nonnegative generalized Ricci curvature. This solves Lin's conjecture completely. To appear in Invent. Mat

Yau's gradient estimates on Alexandrov spaces

In this paper, we establish a Bochner type formula on Alexandrov spaces with Ricci curvature bounded below. Yau's gradient estimate for harmonic functions is also obtained on Alexandrov spaces.Comment: Final version, to appear in J. Differential Geo