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Context:

A solution $(M^n, g(t))$ of the Ricci flow is said to encounter a Type III Singularity if $g(t)$ is defined for all $t \geq 0$ and: $$ \sup _{\mathcal{M}^{n} \times[0, \infty)} \|\operatorname{Rm}(\cdot, t) \| t<\infty $$ Similarly, if $g(t)$ is defined for all $t \geq 0$ but: $$ \sup _{\mathcal{M}^{n} \times[0, \infty)} \|\operatorname{Rm}(\cdot, t) \| t= \infty $$ the solution is said to encounter a Type IIb singularity.

This was taken from the book "The Ricci Flow: An Introduction", by Bennett Chow and Dan Knopf. There, they claim that if $(\mathcal{M}, g_0)$ is an Einstein manifold with $\text{Ric}_{g_0} = \lambda_0 g_0$ and with $g(t) = (1- 2\lambda_0 t)g_0$ as a solution to its Ricci flow, then a Type III singularity happens when $\lambda_0 < 0$ and a Type IIb singularity happens when $\lambda_0 = 0$. Now, in the case $\lambda_0 = 0$, since we have $$\|\text{Rm}(x, t)\|t = t \|\text{Rm}(x,0) \| \ \forall (x, t) \in \mathcal{M} \times [0, \infty)$$ and given that for each $x_0 \in M$, it's clear that $\{\|\text{Rm}(x_0, t)\|t \ \vert \ t \geq 0 \}$ is unbounded, I can see how this case is indeed a Type IIb singularity.

But in the case $\lambda_0 < 0$, we have (assuming without loss of generality that $\lambda_0 = -\frac{1}{2}$):

$$\|\text{Rm}(x, t)\| t = \frac{t}{1+t} \|\text{Rm}(x,0) \| \ \forall (x, t) \in \mathcal{M} \times [0, \infty)$$

But I don't understand how we could bound this. Indeed, since there are examples of Einstein manifolds with unbounded curvature, it seems the authors made a mistake. And actually I can't find any other source where Einstein manifolds with negative scalar curvature are classified as a Type III singularity. So I have two questions:

  • Am I right and have the authors indeed made a mistake in classifying Einstein solutions with negative scalar curvatue as Type III singularities? Or is there something else going on here I'm not seeing?

  • What's even the point of classifying a constant (in time) solution as a singularity, like they do for solutions with $\lambda_0 = 0$? This doesn't make sense to me. The solution is eternal and it falls short of what I intuitively think a singularity should be.

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    $\begingroup$ The terminology appears in a 1995 survey article by Hamilton (see page 60 of this intlpress.com/site/pub/files/_fulltext/journals/sdg/1993/0002/…). The reason to consider it is that if one want's to understand the long time behavior of the flow, then the conditions above help to ensure that an appropriate normalization process produces a reasonable (subsequential) limit. $\endgroup$
    – RBega2
    Commented Aug 16, 2021 at 21:17

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