Uniqueness of the Ricci flow on complete noncompact manifolds

作者:Chen, Bing Long*; Zhu, Xi Ping
来源:Journal of Differential Geometry, 2006, 74(1): 119-154.

摘要

The Ricci flow is an evolution system on metrics. For a given metric as initial data, its local existence and uniqueness on compact manifolds were first established by Hamilton [9]. Later on, De Turck [5] gave a simplified proof. In the later part of 80's, Shi [21] 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. 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.