An Introduction to the Kähler-Ricci Flow

This volume collects lecture notes from courses offered at several conferences and workshops, and provides the first exposition in book form of the basic theory of the Kنhler-Ricci flow and its current state-of-the-art. While several excellent books on Kنhler-Einstein geometry are available, there have been no such works on the Kنhler-Ricci flow. The book will serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in complex differential geometry, complex algebraic geometry and Riemannian geometry, and will hopefully foster further developments in this fascinating area of research.

The Ricci flow was first introduced by R. Hamilton in the early 1980s, and is central in G. Perelmans celebrated proof of the Poincaré conjecture. When specialized for Kنhler manifolds, it becomes the Kنhler-Ricci flow, and reduces to a scalar PDE (parabolic complex Monge-Ampère equation).
As a spin-off of his breakthrough, G. Perelman proved the convergence of the Kنhler-Ricci flow on Kنhler-Einstein manifolds of positive scalar curvature (Fano manifolds). Shortly after, G. Tian and J. Song discovered a complex analogue of Perelmans ideas: the Kنhler-Ricci flow is a metric embodiment of the Minimal Model Program of the underlying manifold, and flips and divisorial contractions assume the role of Perelmans surgeries.