146 5. THE RICCI FLOW ON SURFACES
where the infimum is taken over all C^1 - paths ry : [t 1 , t2] ---+ M^2 joining x1
and x2. Then exponentiation of equation (5.39) yields a classical Harnack
inequality.
PROPOSITION 5.58. Let (M^2 , g (t)) be a complete solution of the nor-
malized Ricci flow with bounded positive scalar curvature. Then there ex-
ist constants C1 > 1 and C > 0 depending only on go such that for all
xi, x2 E M^2 and 0 :S t1 < t2,
- R --(x2 '-t2) > e-4 AC 1 erti -^1 > e-4-C(t2-t1) A
R (x1, t1) - C1ert^2 - 1 -
(5.40)
10.2. The case that R (·, 0) changes sign. We now extend the dif-
ferential Harnack inequality to solutions of the normalized Ricci flow whose
curvature changes sign. Assume that r > 0. As in Section 8.2, we consider
the solution
of the ODE
r
s(t)=-----
1 - ( 1 - S: ) ert
d
- s = s(s - r)
dt
with initial condition
s(O) =so < Rmin(O) < 0.
We define
L = L (g, s) ~ log ( R - s).
A computation similar to that in Lemma 5.53 shows that L evolves by
(5.41) ot {) L A = b..L A + I \7 L A^12 + R - r + s.
Then we define
LEMMA 5.59. Let (M^2 , g (t)) be a solution of the normalized Ricci flow
on a compact surface with any initial metric such that r > 0. Then
{) A A ( A A) I A 1 1
2
otQ=b..Q+2 'VQ,'VL + 2 \7\7L+ 2 (R-r)g
(5.42) +sjvLJ
2
+(r- s)Q+s(R-r).