Mapping problems, fundamental groups and defect measures

We study all the possible weak limits of a minimizing sequence, for p-energy functionals, consisting of continuous maps between Riemannian manifolds subject to a Dirichlet boundary condition or a homotopy condition. We show that if p is not an integer, then any such weak limit is a strong limit and, in particular, a stationary p-harmonic map which is C ^1,α continuous away from a closed subset of the Hausdorff dimension ≤ n − p] − 1. If p is an integer, then any such weak limit is a weakly p-harmonic map along with a (n − p)-rectifiable Radon measure μ. Moreover, the limiting map is C ^1,α continuous away from a closed subset Σ=spt μ ∪ S with H ^{n − p} (S)=0. Finally, we discuss the possible varifolds type theory for Sobolev mappings. Partially supported by NSF Grant DMS 9626166