Contracting axially symmetric hypersurfaces by powers of the $\sigma_k$-curvature

In this paper, we investigate the contracting curvature flow of closed, strictly convex axially symmetric hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ and $\mathbb{S}^{n+1}$ by $\sigma_k^\alpha$, where $\sigma_k$ is the $k$-th elementary symmetric function of the principal curvatures and $\alpha\ge 1/k$. We prove that for any $n\geq3$ and any fixed $k$ with $1\leq k\leq n$, there exists a constant $c(n,k)>1/k$ such that that if $\alpha$ lies in the interval $[1/k,c(n,k)]$, then we have a nice curvature pinching estimate involving the ratio of the biggest principal curvature to the smallest principal curvature of the flow hypersurface, and we prove that the properly rescaled hypersurfaces converge exponentially to the unit sphere. In the case $1<k\le n \le k^2$, we can choose $c(n,k)=\frac{1}{k-1}$. Our results provide an evidence for the general convergence result without initial curvature pinching conditions.