How to produce a Ricci flow via Cheeger-Gromoll exhaustion

Abstract

We prove short time existence for the Ricci flow on open manifolds of non-negative complex sectional curvature without requiring upper curvature bounds. By considering the doubling of convex sets contained in a Cheeger-Gromoll convex exhaustion and solving the singular initial value problem for the Ricci flow on these closed manifolds, we obtain a sequence of closed solutions of the Ricci flow with non-negative complex sectional curvature which subconverge to a Ricci flow on the open manifold. Furthermore, we find an optimal volume growth condition which guarantees long time existence, and give an analysis of the long time behavior of the Ricci flow. We also construct an explicit example of an immortal non-negatively curved Ricci flow with unbounded curvature for all time.