Geometric flows and differential Harnack estimates for heat equations with potentials

Let $M$ be a closed Riemannian manifold with a Riemannian metric $g_{ij}(t)$ evolving by a geometric flow $\partial _{t}g_{ij} = -2{S}_{ij}$ , where $S_{ij}(t)$ is a symmetric two-tensor on $(M, g(t))$ . Suppose that $S_{ij}$ satisfies the tensor inequality $2{\mathcal H}(S, X)+{\mathcal E}(S,X) \ge 0$ for all vector fields $X$ on $M$ , where ${\mathcal H}(S, X)$ and ${\mathcal E}(S,X)$ are introduced in Definition 1 below. Then, we shall prove differential Harnack estimates for positive solutions to time-dependent forward heat equations with potentials. In the case where $S_{ij} = R_{ij}$ , the Ricci tensor of $M$ , our results correspond to the results proved by Cao and Hamilton (Geom Funct Anal 19:983–989, 2009). Moreover, in the case where the Ricci flow coupled with harmonic map heat flow introduced by Müller (Ann Sci Ec Norm Super 45(4):101–142, 2012), our results derive new differential Harnack estimates. We shall also find new entropies which are monotone under the above geometric flow.