- STRATEGY FOR THE CASE THAT x (M^2 > 0) 129
are the metrics of constant curvature. Taken together, these observations
suggest one might be able to show that g (t) converges to a metric of constant
positive curvature by proving that M decays sufficiently rapidly. To explore
this idea, we compute the evolution equation satisfied by M.
LEMMA 5.34. On a solution (M^2 ,g(t)) of the normalized Ricci flow,
the tensor M evolves by
[)
at M = !:'::.M + (r - 2R) M.
PROOF. By Lemma 3.2, the Levi-Civita connection of g evolves by
Using this formula and recalling equations (5.3) and (5.10), we calculate
that
Next we use the fact that