Dimension Reduction for Positively Curved Steady Solitons

Abstract

We consider noncollapsed steady gradient Ricci solitons with nonnegative sectional curvature. We show that such solitons always dimension reduce at infinity. This generalizes an earlier result in [CDM22] to higher dimensions. In dimension four, we classify possible reductions at infinity, which lays foundation for possible classifications of steady solitons. Moreover, we show that any tangent flow at infinity of a general noncollapsed steady soliton must split off a line. This generalizes an earlier result in [BCDMZ21] to higher dimensions. While this article is under preparation, we realized that part of our main results are proved independently in a recent post [ZZ23] under different assumptions.