Boundary blow-up analysis for approximate Dirac-harmonic maps into stationary Lorentzian manifolds

For a sequence of approximate Dirac-harmonic maps from a Riemannian surface with a smooth boundary into a stationary Lorentzian manifold, we study the boundary blow-up analysis and prove the positive energy identity for spinors and the Lorentzian energy identity for maps. Moreover, the positive energy identity for maps holds when the target is a static Lorentzian manifold.     

Blow-up analysis for approximate Dirac-harmonic maps in dimension 2 with applications to the Dirac-harmonic heat flow

Dirac-harmonic maps couple a second order harmonic map type system with a first nonlinear Dirac equation. We consider approximate Dirac-harmonic maps \(\{(\phi _n,\psi _n)\}\), that is, maps that satisfy the Dirac-harmonic system up to controlled error terms. We show that such approximate Dirac-harmonic maps defined on a Riemann surface, that is, in dimension 2, continue to satisfy the basic properties of blow-up analysis like the energy identity and the no neck property. The assumptions are such that they hold for solutions of the heat flow of Dirac-harmonic maps. That flow turns the harmonic map type system into a parabolic system, but simply keeps the Dirac equation as a nonlinear first order constraint along the flow. As a corollary of the main result of this paper, when such a flow blows up at infinite time at interior points, we obtain an energy identity and the no neck property.     

Iteration of closed geodesics in stationary Lorentzian manifolds

Following the lines of Bott in (Commun Pure Appl Math 9:171–206, 1956), we study the Morse index of the iterates of a closed geodesic in stationary Lorentzian manifolds, or, more generally, of a closed Lorentzian geodesic that admits a timelike periodic Jacobi field. Given one such closed geodesic γ, we prove the existence of a locally constant integer valued map Λ_γ on the unit circle with the property that the Morse index of the iterated γ ^N is equal, up to a correction term ε_γ∈{0,1}, to the sum of the values of Λ_γ at the N-th roots of unity. The discontinuities of Λ_γ occur at a finite number of points of the unit circle, that are special eigenvalues of the linearized Poincaré map of γ. We discuss some applications of the theory.     

Bubbling analysis for approximate Lorentzian harmonic maps from Riemann surfaces

For a sequence of approximate harmonic maps \((u_n,v_n)\) (meaning that they satisfy the harmonic system up to controlled error terms) from a compact Riemann surface with smooth boundary to a standard static Lorentzian manifold with bounded energy, we prove that identities for the Lorentzian energy hold during the blow-up process. In particular, in the special case where the Lorentzian target metric is of the form \(g_N -\beta dt^2\) for some Riemannian metric \(g_N\) and some positive function \(\beta \) on N, we prove that such identities also hold for the positive energy (obtained by changing the sign of the negative part of the Lorentzian energy) and there is no neck between the limit map and the bubbles. As an application, we complete the blow-up picture of singularities for a harmonic map flow into a standard static Lorentzian manifold. We prove that the energy identities of the flow hold at both finite and infinite singular times. Moreover, the no neck property of the flow at infinite singular time is true.     

Energy identity for a class of approximate Dirac-harmonic maps from surfaces with boundary

For a sequence of coupled fields $\{({?}_n,{\psi }_n)\}$ from a compact Riemann surface M with smooth boundary to a general compact Riemannian manifold with uniformly bounded energy and satisfying the Dirac-harmonic system up to some uniformly controlled error terms, we show that the energy identity holds during a blow-up process near the boundary. As an application to the heat flow of Dirac-harmonic maps from surfaces with boundary, when such a flow blows up at infinite time, we obtain an energy identity.     

Short time existence of the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps on closed manifolds

The heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps on Riemannian spin manifolds is a modification of the classical heat flow for harmonic maps by coupling it to a spinor. It was introduced by Chen, Jost, Sun, and Zhu as a tool to get a general existence program for Dirac-harmonic maps. For source manifolds with boundary they obtained short time existence, and the existence of a global weak solution was established by Jost, Liu, and Zhu. We prove short time existence of the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps on closed manifolds.     

Compact conformally stationary Lorentzian manifolds with no causal conjugate points

A sequence of integral inequalities for any compact conformally stationary Lorentzian manifold with no conjugate points along its causal geodesics is obtained. If the equality holds for one of them, the Lorentzian manifold must be flat. As an application, several classification results for such manifolds are proved.     

Holomorphic maps into Grassmann manifolds (harmonic maps into Grassmann manifolds III)

Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry - A well-known Calabi’s rigidity theorem on holomorphic isometric immersions into the complex projective space is generalized to the case that the...     

The maximum principle and the Dirichlet problem for Dirac-harmonic maps

We establish a maximum principle and uniqueness for Dirac-harmonic maps from a Riemannian spin manifold with boundary into a regular ball in any Riemannian manifold N. Then we prove an existence theorem for a boundary value problem for Dirac-harmonic maps.     

Regularity for weakly Dirac-harmonic maps to hypersurfaces

We prove that a weakly Dirac-harmonic map from a Riemann spin surface to a compact hypersurface is smooth. Supported by IMPRS “Mathematics in the Sciences” and the Klaus Tschira Foundation.     

Regularity theorems and energy identities for Dirac-harmonic maps

We study Dirac-harmonic maps from a Riemann surface to a sphere We show that a weakly Dirac-harmonic map is in fact smooth, and prove that the energy identity holds during the blow-up process.The research of QC and JYL was partially supported by NSFC. QC was also partially supported by the FOK Yingtung Education Foundation.     

Conformal reference frames for Lorentzian manifolds

We define a conformal reference frame, i.e., a special projection of the six-dimensional sky bundle of a Lorentzian manifold (or the five-dimensional twistor space) to a three-dimensional manifold. We construct an example, a conformal compactification, for Minkowski space. Based on the complex structure on the skies, we define the celestial transformation of Lorentzian vectors, a kind of spinor correspondence. We express a 1-form generating the contact structure in the twistor space (when it is smooth) explicitly as a form taking line-bundle values. We prove a theorem on the projection of this 1-form to the fiberwise normal bundle of a reference frame; its corollary is an equation for the flow of time.     

Regularity of harmonic maps into a static Lorentzian manifold

We study the regularity of harmonic maps from Riemannian manifold into a static Lorentzian manifold. We show that when the domain manifold is two-dimensional, any weakly harmonic map is smooth. We also show that when dimension n of the domain manifold is greater than two, there exists a weakly harmonic map for the Dirichlet problem which is smooth except for a closed set whose (n − 2)-dimensional Hausdorff measure is zero.     

Energy identity of approximate biharmonic maps to Riemannian manifolds and its application

We consider in dimension four weakly convergent sequences of approximate biharmonic maps to a Riemannian manifold with bi-tension fields bounded in $L^p$ for $p>\frac{4}{3}$. We prove an energy identity that accounts for the loss of hessian energies by the sum of hessian energies over finitely many nontrivial biharmonic maps on ${\mathbb{R}}^4$. As a corollary, we obtain an energy identity for the heat flow of biharmonic maps at time infinity.