Introduction to the Ricci Flow

WS 2019/2020
Exercise Sheet 10

Each exercise gives two points for a total of eight points on this sheet.

1. Show that if (gt )t∈[0,T ) is a solution of the normalized Ricci flow, then

∂t ∆gt f = 2(Kgt − K̄)∆gt f

for any f ∈ C ∞ (M ).

2. Show that for any Riemannian manifold (M, g) and f ∈ C ∞ (M ) the following inequality
holds
(∆g f )2 ≤ n| Hessg (f )|2 ,
where n is the dimension of M .

3. Let M be a manifold, g a Riemannian metric on M and h ∈ Γ(Sym2 T ∗ M ). Show that

for any three vector fields X, Y, Z ∈ Γ(T M ) the formula
1
∂t |t=0 g(∇g+th (∇gX h)(Y, Z) + (∇gY h)(X, Z) − (∇gZ h)(X, Y ) .


X Y, Z) =
2

4. Let M be a manifold, g a Riemannian metric and h ∈ Γ(Sym2 T ∗ M ). Show that for any
four vector fields X, Y, Z, W ∈ Γ(T M ) the following formula holds
1
∂t t=0 Rm(X, Y, Z, W ) = (h(Rg (X, Y )W, Z) − h(Rg (X, Y )Z, W ))

2
1
+ (∇gY ∇gW h)(X, Z) − (∇gY ∇gW h)(X, Z)
2
+ (∇gY ∇gW h)(X, Z) − (∇gY ∇gW h)(X, Z)