Harnack inequalities for curvature flows in Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds

We obtain Harnack estimates for a class of curvature flows in Riemannian manifolds of constant nonnegative sectional curvature as well as in the Lorentzian Minkowski and de Sitter spaces. Furthermore, we prove a Harnack estimate with a bonus term for mean curvature flow in locally symmetric Riemannian Einstein manifolds of nonnegative sectional curvature. Using a concept of “duality” for strictly convex hypersurfaces, we also obtain a new type of inequality, so-called “pseudo”-Harnack inequality, for expanding flows in the sphere and in the hyperbolic space.

Differential Harnack estimates for conjugate heat equation under the Ricci flow

We prove (local and global) differential Harnack inequalities for all positive solutions to the geometric conjugate heat equation coupled to the forward in time Ricci flow. In this case, the diffusion operator is perturbed with the curvature operator, precisely, the Laplace–Beltrami operator is replaced with “[Formula: see text]”, where [Formula: see text] is the scalar curvature of the Ricci flow, which is well generalized to the case of nonlinear heat equation with potential. Our estimates improve on some well known results by weakening the curvature constraints. As a by-product, we obtain some Li–Yau-type differential Harnack estimate. The localized version of our estimate is very useful in extending the results obtained to noncompact case.