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Stability and instability of Einstein manifolds with prescribed asymptotic geometry

The Ricci flow is a geometric evolution equation that plays a fundamental role in modern Riemannian geometry.

To get a better understanding of the long time behaviour of the Ricci flow and of its singularities, it is important to study the stability of its stationary points on the space of metrics modulo homotheties, which are called Ricci solitons.

While the connection between linear stability, integrability and dynamical stability is now well understood in the compact case, the noncompact situation is understood only for particular examples or under very strict conditions. A general criterion for dynamical instability has not been shown so far. The aim of this project is to improve the knowledge about these questions in the noncompact case.

Publications

In this paper we discuss Perelman's Lambda-functional, Perelman's Ricci shrinker entropy as well as the Ricci expander entropy on a class of manifolds with isolated conical singularities. On such manifolds, a singular Ricci de Turck flow preserving the isolated conical singularities exists by our previous work. We prove that the entropies are monotone along the singular Ricci de Turck flow. We employ these entropies to show that in the singular setting, Ricci solitons are gradient and that steady or expanding Ricci solitons are Einstein.

 Journal Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. Volume 374 Pages 2873-2908 Link to preprint version Link to published version

We consider the heat equation associated to Schrödinger operators acting on vector bundles on asymptotically locally Euclidean (ALE) manifolds. Novel LpLq decay estimates are established, allowing the Schrödinger operator to have a non-trivial L2-kernel. We also prove new decay estimates for spatial derivatives of arbitrary order, in a general geometric setting. Our main motivation is the application to stability of non-linear geometric equations, primarily Ricci flow, which will be presented in a companion paper. The arguments in this paper use that many geometric Schrödinger operators can be written as the square of Dirac type operators. By a remarkable result of Wang, this is even true for the Lichnerowicz Laplacian, under the assumption of a parallel spinor. Our analysis is based on a novel combination of the Fredholm theory for Dirac type operators on ALE manifolds and recent advances in the study of the heat kernel on non-compact manifolds.

 Journal Int. Math Res. Not. Link to preprint version Link to published version

We compute the spectra of the Laplace-Beltrami operator, the connection Laplacian on 1-forms and the Einstein operator on symmetric 2-tensors on the sine-cone over a positive Einstein manifold $(M,g)$. We conclude under which conditions on $(M,g)$, the sine-cone is dynamically stable under the singular Ricci-de Turck flow and rigid as a singular Einstein manifold

 Journal J. Funct. Anal. Volume 281 Pages 109115 Link to preprint version Link to published version

We prove stability of integrable ALE manifolds with a parallel spinor under Ricci flow, given an initial metric which is close in $L^p\cap L^{\infty}$, for any $p\in (1,n)$, where $n$ is the dimension of the manifold. In particular, our result applies to all known examples of 4-dimensional gravitational instantons. Our decay rates are strong enough to prove positive scalar curvature rigidity in $L^p$, for each $p\in [1,\frac{n}{n-2})$, generalizing a result by Appleton.

In this paper we consider a Ricci de Turck flow of spaces with isolated conical singularities, which preserves the conical structure along the flow. We establish that a given initial regularity of Ricci curvature is preserved along the flow. Moreover under additional assumptions, positivity of scalar curvature is preserved under such a flow, mirroring the standard property of Ricci flow on compact manifolds. The analytic difficulty is the a priori low regularity of scalar curvature at the conical tip along the flow, so that the maximum principle does not apply. We view this work as a first step toward studying positivity of the curvature operator along the singular Ricci flow.

A classical problem in general relativity is the Cauchy problem for the linearised Einstein equation (the initial value problem for gravitational waves) on a globally hyperbolic vacuum spacetime. A well-known result is that it is uniquely solvable up to gauge solutions, given initial data on a spacelike Cauchy hypersurface. The solution map is an isomorphism between initial data (modulo gauge producing initial data) and solutions (modulo gauge solutions). In the first part of this work, we show that the solution map is actually an isomorphism of locally convex topological vector spaces. This implies that the equivalence class of solutions depends continuously on the equivalence class of initial data. We may therefore conclude well-posedness of the Cauchy problem. In the second part, we show that the linearised constraint equations can always be solved on a closed manifold with vanishing scalar curvature. This generalises the classical notion of TT-tensors on flat space used to produce models of gravitational waves. All our results are proven for smooth and distributional initial data of arbitrary real Sobolev regularity.

 Journal Annales Henri Poincaré Publisher Springer International Publishing Volume 20 Pages 3849–3888 Link to preprint version Link to published version

We prove that any compact Cauchy horizon with constant non-zero surface gravity in a smooth vacuum spacetime is a Killing horizon. The novelty here is that the Killing vector field is shown to exist on both sides of the horizon. This generalises classical results by Moncrief and Isenberg, by dropping the assumption that the metric is analytic. In previous work by Rácz and the author, the Killing vector field was constructed on the globally hyperbolic side of the horizon. In this paper, we prove a new unique continuation theorem for wave equations through smooth compact lightlike (characteristic) hypersurfaces which allows us to extend the Killing vector field beyond the horizon. The main ingredient in the proof of this theorem is a novel Carleman type estimate. Using a well-known construction, our result applies in particular to smooth stationary asymptotically flat vacuum black hole spacetimes with event horizons with constant non-zero surface gravity. As a special case, we therefore recover Hawking's local rigidity theorem for such black holes, which was recently proven by Alexakis-Ionescu-Klainerman using a different Carleman type estimate.

In this paper we establish stability of the Ricci de Turck flow near Ricci-flat metrics with isolated conical singularities. More precisely, we construct a Ricci de Turck flow which starts sufficiently close to a Ricci-flat metric with isolated conical singularities and converges to a singular Ricci-flat metric under an assumption of integrability, linear and tangential stability. We provide a characterization of conical singularities satisfying tangential stability and discuss examples where the integrability condition is satisfied.

 Journal Calc. Var. Part. Differ. Eq. Publisher Springer Volume 58 Pages 75 Link to preprint version Link to published version

We consider the long-time behaviour of the mean curvature flow of spacelike hypersurfaces in the Lorentzian product manifold M×R, where M is asymptotically flat. If the initial hypersurface F0⊂M×R is uniformly spacelike and asymptotic to M×{s} for some s∈R at infinity, we show that the mean curvature flow starting at F0 exists for all times and converges uniformly to M×{s} as t→∞.

We study the following problem: Given initial data on a compact Cauchy horizon, does there exist a unique solution to wave equations on the globally hyperbolic region? Our main results apply to any spacetime satisfying the null energy condition and containing a compact Cauchy horizon with surface gravity that can be normalised to a non-zero constant. Examples include the Misner spacetime and the Taub-NUT spacetime. We prove an energy estimate close to the Cauchy horizon for wave equations acting on sections of vector bundles. Using this estimate we prove that if a linear wave equation can be solved up to any order at the Cauchy horizon, then there exists a unique solution on the globally hyperbolic region. As a consequence, we prove several existence and uniqueness results for linear and non-linear wave equations without assuming analyticity or symmetry of the spacetime and without assuming that the generators close. We overcome in particular the essential remaining difficulty in proving that vacuum spacetimes with a compact Cauchy horizon with constant non-zero surface gravity necessarily admits a Killing vector field. This work is therefore related to the strong cosmic censorship conjecture.

We prove that any smooth vacuum spacetime containing a compact Cauchy horizon with surface gravity that can be normalised to a non-zero constant admits a Killing vector field. This proves a conjecture by Moncrief and Isenberg from 1983 under the assumption on the surface gravity and generalises previous results due to Moncrief-Isenberg and Friedrich-Rácz-Wald, where the generators of the Cauchy horizon were closed or densely filled a 2-torus. Consequently, the maximal globally hyperbolic vacuum development of generic initial data cannot be extended across a compact Cauchy horizon with surface gravity that can be normalised to a non-zero constant. Our result supports, thereby, the validity of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in the considered special case. The proof consists of two main steps. First, we show that the Killing equation can be solved up to any order at the Cauchy horizon. Second, by applying a recent result of the first author on wave equations with initial data on a compact Cauchy horizon, we show that this Killing vector field extends to the globally hyperbolic region.