On the blow-up of four dimensional Ricci flow singularities

Abstract

In this paper we prove a conjecture by Feldman-Ilmanen-Knopf in \cite{FIK} that the gradient shrinking soliton metric they constructed on the tautological line bundle over $\CP^1$ is the uniform limit of blow-ups of a type I Ricci flow singularity on a closed manifold. We use this result to show that limits of blow-ups of Ricci flow singularities on closed four dimensional manifolds do not necessarily have non-negative Ricci curvature.