- CHARACTERIZING ROUND SOLUTIONS 89
each 'Yt, is a minimizer for I ( ·; g(ti)). Consider the pointed sequence of solutions
(5^2 , gi (t) , pi ), t E (-oo,-Li^2 t i ), where
9i (t) ~ Li^2 g (ti+ LT t)
and Pi E 'Yt,. Since 0 < R 9 (x , t) :::; Con 52 x (-oo, -1], we have
(29.68) R 9 , (x , t) :::; CL; on 52 x (-oo, - Li^2 (t i + l)]
(note that - Li^2 (ti+ 1) -7 +oo). Furthermore, by Klingenberg's theorem, we have
(29.69) inj(5^2 , g(t)) ~ :c fort E (-oo, -1].
Hence
(29. 70)
By Hamilton's compactness theorem for the Ricci fl.ow, there exists a subsequence
{gi(t)} which converges in the C^00 Cheeger- Gromov sense to a so lution (M~,
g 00 (t) , p 00 ) , t E (-00,00). By (29.68) and (29.70), we have that g 00 (t) is flat and
inj (g 00 (0)) = oo. This implies that (M 00 , g 00 (t)) is the static Euclidean plane.
Now the isoperimetric constant at t ime ti is
(29.71) I( t i ) = L~(t, ) ('Yt;) (A +^1 ht,; g( ti)) + A =^1 ht,; g(ti)))
= Area;,(o)(5!(ti)) + Area;,(o)(5~(ti)),
where 'Yt; divides 52 into 5 i (ti) and 5 ~ (ti).
On the other hand, since 19 ,(o) ht,) = 1, since 'Yt, is a C^00 embedded loop with
constant geodesic curvature with respect to gi(O), and since Pi E 'Yt,, we have that
under the Cheeger- Gromov convergence of gi(O) to g 00 (0) the sequence of loops 'Yt,
subconverges to some smooth embedded loop -y 00 , where L 9 =(o) ('Y 00 ) = 1.^2 Note
that by (29.60) we have that lig;(O) ('Yt;) is uniformly bounded. The loop 'Yeo divides
M 00 into two regions, one of which is bounded, which we call Meo,+, and one
of which is unbounded, which we call Meo,- · Without loss of generality, we may
assume that
Area 9 ,(o)(5!(ti )):::; Area 9 ,(o)(5~(ti)).
Then, by this and the convergence of 'Yt, to 'Yeo, we have that
and
Therefore, by applying this to (29.71), we conclude that I(ti ) ~ c for some constant
c > 0. (Actually, limi-+co I(ti ) = 47r.) This contradiction to (29.65) completes the
proof of the lower bound. 0
(^2) As in the proof of Lemma 29.18(4), one first observes that 'Yoo is an immersed closed curve
with a t most self-tange ncies and then shows that 'Yoo is embedded.