Ricci Flow and Geometrization of 3-Manifolds

This book is based on lectures given at Stanford University in 2009. The purpose of the lectures and of the book is to give an introductory overview of how to use Ricci flow and Ricci flow with surgery to establish the Poincare Conjecture and the more general Geometrization Conjecture for 3-dimensional manifolds. Most of the material is geometric and analytic in nature; a crucial ingredient is understanding singularity development for 3-dimensional Ricci flows and for 3-dimensional Ricci flows with surgery. This understanding is crucial for extending Ricci flows with surgery so that they are defined for all positive time. Once this result is in place, one must study the nature of the time-slices as the time goes to infinity in order to deduce the topological consequences. The goal of the authors is to present the major geometric and analytic results and themes of the subject without weighing down the presentation with too many details. This book can be read as an introduction to more complete treatments of the same material.