Two flow approaches to the Loewner-Nirenberg problem on manifolds

Abstract

We introduce two flow approaches to the Loewner--Nirenberg problem on comapct Riemannian manifolds $(M^n,g)$ with boundary and establish the convergence of the corresponding Cauchy--Dirichlet problems to the solution of the Loewner--Nirenberg problem. In particular, when the initial data $u_0\in C^{4,\alpha}(M)$ is a solution or a strict subsolution to the equation $(1.1)$, the convergence holds for both the direct flow $(1.3)-(1.5)$ and the Yamabe flow $(1.10)$. Moreover, when the background metric satisfies $R_g\geq0$, the convergence holds for any positive initial data $u_0\in C^{2,\alpha}(M)$ for the direct flow; while for the case the first eigenvalue $\lambda_1<0$ for the Dirichlet problem of the conformal Laplacian $L_g$, the convergence holds for $u_0>v_0$ where $v_0$ is the largest solution to the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary value problem of $(1.1)$ and $v_0>0$ in $M^{\circ}$ (the interior of $M$). We also give an equivalent description between the existence of a metric of positive scalar curvature in the conformal class of $(M,g)$ and $\displaystyle\inf_{u\in C^1(M),\,u\not\equiv 0\,\text{on}\,\partial M}Q(u)>-\infty$, where $Q$ is the energy functional (see $(1.8)$) of the second type Escobar-Yamabe problem.