Singular Ricci flows I

We introduce singular Ricci flows, which are Ricci flow spacetimes subject to certain asymptotic conditions. We consider the behavior of Ricci flow with surgery starting from a fixed initial compact Riemannian 3-manifold, as the surgery parameter varies. We prove that the flow with surgery subconverges to a singular Ricci flow as the surgery parameter tends to zero. We establish a number of geometric and analytical properties of singular Ricci flows.