Orbifold singularity formation along ancient and immortal Ricci flows (2410.16075v2)

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.