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One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.

Update: A series of works by Bamler, Kleiner and Lott have carried out this program (I don’t claim that it is original to me) and have proved the existence of a canonical Ricci-flow-with-surgery on compact 3-manifolds and used this to prove the generalized Smale conjecture in all remaining cases.

Rather than cite all of the papers that contributed to this program, I’ll note that the final case of the generalized Smale conjecture was settled recently for Nil manifolds. For further references, see the survey paper of Bamler.

One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.

Update: A series of works by Bamler, Kleiner and Lott have carried out this program (I don’t claim that it is original to me) and have proved the existence of a canonical Ricci-flow-with-surgery on compact 3-manifolds and used this to prove the generalized Smale conjecture in all remaining cases.

Rather than cite all of the papers that contributed to this program, I’ll note that the final case of the generalized Smale conjecture was settled recently for Nil manifolds. For further references, see the survey paper of Bamler, New developments in Ricci flow with surgery.

One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.

One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.

Update: A series of works by Bamler, Kleiner and Lott have carried out this program (I don’t claim that it is original to me) and have proved the existence of a canonical Ricci-flow-with-surgery on compact 3-manifolds and used this to prove the generalized Smale conjecture in all remaining cases.

Rather than cite all of the papers that contributed to this program, I’ll note that the final case of the generalized Smale conjecture was settled recently for Nil manifolds. For further references, see the survey paper of Bamler.

One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.

One of the unresolved questions about 3-manifolds is the generalized Smale conjecture, which roughly interpreted asks for the homotopy type of the space of diffeomorphisms of a 3-manifold. Smale originally conjectured that $Diff(S^3)\simeq O(4)$, and this was proven by Hatcher. He also worked out the homotopy type of diffeomorphisms of Haken 3-manifolds. Another interpretation of Smale's question is that the space of round (constant sectional curvature $=1$) metrics on $S^3$ is contractible. Gabai proved the analogous statement that the space of hyperbolic metrics on a hyperbolic 3-manifold is contractible, and recently McCullough and Soma have dealt many small (non-Haken) Seifert-fibered spaces. However, the case of the generalized Smale conjecture for elliptic manifolds is still open (see however the work of Hong et. al.). I think this is an important open question, and it would be useful to have a unified proof of these results (in particular, Gabai's results makes use of a computer-aided proof of the existence of "non-coalescable insulator families").

One possible approach is to try to prove that the space of metrics is contractible (on a constant curvature manifold) by showing that all the homotopy groups vanish (it is known to be of the homotopy type of a CW-complex, so this suffices). This was the approach that Gabai took. You can fill in a sphere of constant curvature metrics with a ball of Riemannian metrics, since the space of Riemannian metrics is convex. Then you could try to "flow" towards a ball of constant curvature metrics using Ricci flow (which would stay fixed on the boundary of the ball). The issue is that under Ricci flow, singularities may occur. However, what I hope is that some sort of canonical Ricci-flow with surgery may be used to fill in the sphere with a ball of constant curvature metrics. Thus, I see it as an important question for 3-manifold topology to obtain an understanding of a version of Ricci flow-with-surgery and Perelman's proof of geometrization for families of Riemannian metrics. This approach for more general Seifert fibered spaces would be trickier, since one would probably have to get a very good idea of how the collapsing occurs at infinite time under Ricci flow, and prove finiteness of surgeries.