Stability of piecewise flat Ricci flow

Abstract: The stability of a recently developed piecewise flat Ricci flow is investigated, using a linear stability analysis and numerical simulations, and a class of piecewise flat approximations of smooth manifolds is adapted to avoid an inherent numerical instability. These adaptations have also been used in a related paper to show the convergence of the piecewise flat Ricci flow to known smooth Ricci flow solutions for a variety of manifolds.