The Blow-up Locus of Heat Flows for Harmonic Maps

Abstract Let M and N be two compact Riemannian manifolds. Let u _k (x, t) be a sequence of strong stationary weak heat flows from M×R ⁺ to N with bounded energies. Assume that u _k→u weakly in H ^{1, 2}(M×R ⁺, N) and that Σ^t is the blow-up set for a fixed t > 0. In this paper we first prove Σ^t is an H ^m−2-rectifiable set for almost all t∈R ⁺. And then we prove two blow-up formulas for the blow-up set and the limiting map. From the formulas, we can see that if the limiting map u is also a strong stationary weak heat flow, Σ^t is a distance solution of the (m− 2)-dimensional mean curvature flow 1]. If a smooth heat flow blows-up at a finite time, we derive a tangent map or a weakly quasi-harmonic sphere and a blow-up set ∪_t<0Σ^t× {t}. We prove the blow-up map is stationary if and only if the blow-up locus is a Brakke motion. This work is supported by NSF grant