The heat flow in nonlinear Hodge theory

We study the nonlinear Hodge system dω=0 and δ(ρ(|ω|²)ω)=0 for an exterior form ω on a compact oriented Riemannian manifold M, where ρ(Q) is a given positive function. The solutions are called ρ-harmonic forms. They are the stationary points on cohomology classes of the functional with e′(Q)=ρ(Q)/2. The ρ-codifferential of a form ω is defined as δ_ρω=ρ⁻¹δ(ρω) with ρ=ρ(|ω|²).We evolve a given closed form ω₀ by the nonlinear heat flow system for a time-dependent exterior form ω(x,t) on M. This system is the differential of the normalized gradient flow for E(ω) with ω=ω₀+du. Under a technical assumption on the function 2ρ′(Q)Q/ρ(Q), we show that the nonlinear heat flow system , with initial condition ω(·,0)=ω₀, has a unique solution for all times, which converges to a ρ-harmonic form in the cohomology class of ω₀. This yields a nonlinear Hodge theorem that every cohomology class of M has a unique ρ-harmonic representative.