Destabilising compact warped product Einstein manifolds

The linear stability of warped product Einstein metrics as fixed points of the Ricci flow is investigated. We generalise the results of Gibbons, Hartnoll and Pope and show that in sufficiently low dimensions, all warped product Einstein metrics are unstable. By exploiting the relationship between warped product Einstein metrics, quasi-Einstein metrics and Ricci solitons, we introduce a new destabilising perturbation (the Ricci variation) and show that certain infinite families of warped product Einstein metrics will be unstable in high dimensions.