Backward Ricci Flow on Locally Homogeneous 4-Manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we study backward Ricci flow of locally homogeneous geometries of $4$-manifolds which admit compact quotients. We describe the long-term behavior of each class and show that many of the classes exhibit the same behavior near the singular time. In most cases, these manifolds converge to a sub-Riemannian geometry after suitable rescaling.