The existence of harmonic maps from Finsler manifolds to Riemannian manifolds

In this paper,we consider the existence of harmonic maps from a Finsler man-ifold and study the characterisation of harmonic maps,in the spirit of lshihara.Using heatequation method we show that any map from a compact Finsler manifold M to a com-pact Riemannian manifold with non-positive sectional curvature can be deformed into aharmonic map which has minimum energy in its homotopy class.