Orbifold singularity formation along ancient and immortal Ricci flows

Abstract

In stark contrast to lower dimensions, we produce a plethora of ancient and immortal Ricci flows in real dimension $4$ with Einstein orbifolds as tangent flows at infinity. For instance, for any $k\in {\mathbb{N}}_0$, we obtain continuous families of non-isometric ancient Ricci flows on $\#k({\mathbb{S}}^2\times {\mathbb{S}}^2)$ depending on a number of parameters growing linearly in $k$, and a family of half-PIC ancient Ricci flows on ${\mathbb{CP}}^2\#{\mathbb{CP}}^2$. The ancient/immortal dichotomy is determined by a notion of linear stability of orbifold singularities with respect to the expected way for them to appear along Ricci flow: by bubbling off Ricci-flat ALE metrics. We discuss the case of Ricci solitons orbifolds and motivate a conjecture that spherical and cylindrical solitons with orbifold singularities, which are unstable in our sense, should not appear along Ricci flow by bubbling off Ricci-flat ALE metrics.

160 pages, no figure, v2: added initial condition in some statements in the immortal case, proofs are unchanged