In this paper we derive optimal growth estimates on the potential functions of complete noncompact shrinking solitons. Based on this, we prove that a complete noncompact gradient shrinking Ricci soliton has at most Euclidean volume growth. This latter result can be viewed as an analog of the well-known volume comparison theorem of Bishop that a complete noncompact Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature has at most Euclidean volume growth.

LetMbe a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension n > 2. The k-curvature, for k = 1, 2, . . . , n, is defined as the k-th ele- mentary symmetric polynomial of the eigenvalues of the Schouten tenser. The k-Yamabe problem is to prove the existence of a con- formal metric whose k-curvature is a constant. When k = 1, it reduces to the well-known Yamabe problem. Under the assumption that the metric is admissible, the existence of solutions is known for the case k = 2, n = 4, for locally conformally flat manifolds and for the cases k > n/2. In this paper we prove the solvability of the k-Yamabe problem in the remaining cases k ≤ n/2, under the hypothesis that the problem is variational. This includes all of the cases k = 2 as well as the locally conformally flat case.

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This note surveys and compares results on the separation of variables construction for soliton solutions of curvature equations including the K\"ahler-Ricci flow and the Lagrangian mean curvature flow. In the last section, we propose some new generalizations in the Lagrangian mean curvature flow case.