Second variation of volume and energy of vector fields. Stability of Hopf vector fields

In this paper we compute the Hessian of the volume of unit vector fields at a minimal one. We also find the Hessians of a family of functionals thus generalizing the known results concerning second variation of the energy or total bending. We use them to study the stability of Hopf vector fields on and to show that they are stable for , but that for there is such that for the index is at least . Received May 10, 1999 / Published online April 12, 2001     

Stability numbers in K-contact manifolds

The aim of this paper is to study the stability of the characteristic vector field of a compact K-contact manifold with respect to the energy and volume functionals when we consider on the manifold a two-parameter variation of the metric. First of all, we multiply the metric in the direction of the characteristic vector field by a constant and then we change the metric by homotheties. We will study to what extent the results obtained in [V. Borrelli, Stability of the characteristic vector field of a Sasakian manifold, Soochow J. Math. 30 (2004) 283-292. Erratum on the article: Stability of the characteristic vector field of a Sasakian manifold, Soochow J. Math. 32 (2006) 179-180] for Sasakian manifolds are valid for a general K-contact manifold. Finally, as an example, we will study the stability of Hopf vector fields on Berger spheres when we consider homotheties of Berger metrics.     

Minimal and Harmonic Unit Vector Fields in and Its Dual Space

 The complex two-plane Grassmannian carries a K?hler structure J and also a quaternionic K?hler structure ?. For we consider the classes of connected real hypersurfaces (M, g) with normal bundle such that and are invariant under the action of the shape operator. We prove that the corresponding unit Hopf vector fields on these hypersurfaces always define minimal immersions of (M, g), and harmonic maps from (M, g), into the unit tangent sphere bundle with Sasaki metric . The radial unit vector fields corresponding to the tubular hypersurfaces are also minimal and harmonic. Similar results hold for the dual space . (Received 27 August 1999; in revised form 18 November 1999)     

A critical radius for unit Hopf vector fields on spheres

The volume of a unit vector field V of the sphere (n odd) is the volume of its image V() in the unit tangent bundle. Unit Hopf vector fields, that is, unit vector fields that are tangent to the fibre of a Hopf fibration are well known to be critical for the volume functional. Moreover, Gluck and Ziller proved that these fields achieve the minimum of the volume if n = 3 and they opened the question of whether this result would be true for all odd dimensional spheres. It was shown to be inaccurate on spheres of radius one. Indeed, Pedersen exhibited smooth vector fields on the unit sphere with less volume than Hopf vector fields for a dimension greater than five. In this article, we consider the situation for any odd dimensional spheres, but not necessarily of radius one. We show that the stability of the Hopf field actually depends on radius, instability occurs precisely if and only if In particular, the Hopf field cannot be minimum in this range. On the contrary, for r small, a computation shows that the volume of vector fields built by Pedersen is greater than the volume of the Hopf one thus, in this case, the Hopf vector field remains a candidate to be a minimizer. We then study the asymptotic behaviour of the volume; for small r it is ruled by the first term of the Taylor expansion of the volume. We call this term the twisting of the vector field. The lower this term is, the lower the volume of the vector field is for small r. It turns out that unit Hopf vector fields are absolute minima of the twisting. This fact, together with the stability result, gives two positive arguments in favour of the Gluck and Ziller conjecture for small r.     

On the volume of unit vector fields on spaces of constant sectional curvature

A unit vector field X on a Riemannian manifold determines a submanifold in the unit tangent bundle. The volume of X is the volume of this submanifold for the induced Sasaki metric. It is known that the parallel fields are the trivial minima. In this paper, we obtain a lower bound for the volume in terms of the integrals of the 2i-symmetric functions of the second fundamental form of the orthogonal distribution to the field X. In the spheres ${\textbf {S}}^{2k+1}$, this lower bound is independent of X. Consequently, the volume of a unit vector field on an odd-sphere is always greater than the volume of the radial field. The main theorem on volumes is applied also to hyperbolic compact spaces, giving a non-trivial lower bound of the volume of unit fields.     

Harmonic sections of Riemannian vector bundles, and metrics of Cheeger-Gromoll type

We study harmonic sections of a Riemannian vector bundle E→M when E is equipped with a 2-parameter family of metrics hp,q which includes both the Sasaki and Cheeger-Gromoll metrics. For every k>0 there exists a unique p such that the harmonic sections of the radius-k sphere subbundle are harmonic sections of E with respect to hp,q for all q. In both compact and non-compact cases, Bernstein regions of the (p,q)-plane are identified, where the only harmonic sections of E with respect to hp,q are parallel. Examples are constructed of vector fields which are harmonic sections of E=TM in the case where M is compact and has non-zero Euler characteristic.     

Harmonic Hopf constructions and isoparametric gradient maps

This note provides a complete answer to a problem of Ding-Fan-Li on the homotopy classes of harmonic Hopf constructions. Moreover, it gives applications to isoparametric gradient maps.     

Implicitly defined harmonic PHH submersions

The concept of harmonic pseudo-horizontally homothetic submersion, alias harmonic PHH submersion, expresses the more geometric notion of smooth family of minimal submanifolds indexed by a K?hler parameter manifold. We give results that allow to construct harmonic PHH submersions by solving some implicit equations and we apply this method to the case of sphere bundles. Received: 3 September 1998 / Accepted: 19 March 1999     

A topological minorization for the volume of vector fields on 5-manifolds

A vector field X on a Riemannian manifold determines a submanifold in the tangent bundle. The volume of X is the volume of this submanifold for the induced Sasaki metric. When M is compact, the volume is well defined and, usually, this functional is studied for unit fields. Parallel vector fields are trivial minima of this functional.For manifolds of dimension 5, we obtain an explicit result showing how the topology of a vector field with constant length influences its volume. We apply this result to the case of vector fields that define Riemannian foliations with all leaves compact.Received: 29 April 2004     

Classification of homogeneous almost cosymplectic three-manifolds

The purpose of this paper is to classify all simply connected homogeneous almost cosymplectic three-manifolds. We show that each such three-manifold is either a Lie group G equipped with a left invariant almost cosymplectic structure or a Riemannian product of type R×N, where N is a Kähler surface of constant curvature. Moreover, we find that the Reeb vector field of any homogeneous almost cosymplectic three-manifold, except one case, defines a harmonic map.     

Unique solvability of the Dirichlet problem¶for weakly harmonic maps

We prove existence and uniqueness of weakly harmonic maps from the unit ball in ℝ ⁿ (with n≥ 3) to a smooth compact target manifold within the class of maps with small scaled energy for suitable boundary data. Received: 9 June 2000 / Revised version: 17 April 2001     

On geometric vector fields of Minkowski spaces and their applications

As it is well-known, a Minkowski space is a finite dimensional real vector space equipped with a Minkowski functional F. By the help of its second order partial derivatives we can introduce a Riemannian metric on the vector space and the indicatrix hypersurface S:=F⁻¹(1) can be investigated as a Riemannian submanifold in the usual sense.Our aim is to study affine vector fields on the vector space which are, at the same time, affine with respect to the Funk metric associated with the indicatrix hypersurface. We give an upper bound for the dimension of their (real) Lie algebra and it is proved that equality holds if and only if the Minkowski space is Euclidean. Criteria of the existence is also given in lower dimensional cases. Note that in case of a Euclidean vector space the Funk metric reduces to the standard Cayley-Klein metric perturbed with a nonzero 1-form.As an application of our results we present the general solution of Matsumoto's problem on conformal equivalent Berwald and locally Minkowski manifolds. The reasoning is based on the theory of harmonic vector fields on the tangent spaces as Riemannian manifolds or, in an equivalent way, as Minkowski spaces. Our main result states that the conformal equivalence between two Berwald manifolds must be trivial unless the manifolds are Riemannian.     

The Dirichlet problem at infinity for harmonic map equations arising from constant mean curvature surfaces in the hyperbolic 3-space

The purpose of this paper is to study some uniqueness, existence and regularity properties of the Dirichlet problem at infinity for proper harmonic maps from the hyperbolic m-space to the open unit n-ball with a specific incomplete metric. When m=n=2, harmonic solutions of this Dirichlet problem yield complete constant mean curvature surfaces in the hyperbolic 3-space. Received: 25 January 2001 / Accepted: 23 February 2001 / Published online: 25 June 2001     

Harmonic morphisms as unit normal bundles¶of minimal surfaces

Let be an isometric immersion between Riemannian manifolds and be the unit normal bundle of f. We discuss two natural Riemannian metrics on the total space and necessary and sufficient conditions on f for the projection map to be a harmonic morphism. We show that the projection map of the unit normal bundle of a minimal surface in a Riemannian manifold is a harmonic morphism with totally geodesic fibres. Received: 6 February 1999     

Vertical sectional curvature and K-contactness

We prove that a contact form with riemannian characteristic flow is K-contact. We also present a purely riemannian hypothesis which implies the existence of a K-contact form with a prescribed unit Killing vector field as characteristic vector field. Our hypothesis is weaker than that previously presented by Hatakeyama, Ogawa and Tanno.     

On harmonic tori in compact rank one symmetric spaces

In this paper we prove that, in contrast with the Sn and CPn cases, there are harmonic 2-tori into the quaternionic projective space HPn which are neither of finite type nor of finite uniton number; we also prove that any harmonic 2-torus in a compact Riemannian symmetric space which can be obtained via the twistor construction is of finite type if and only it is constant; in particular, we conclude that any harmonic 2-torus in CPn or Sn which is simultaneously of finite type and of finite uniton number must be constant.     

Harmonic morphisms of warped product type from Einstein manifolds

Weitzenb?ck type identities for harmonic morphisms of warped product type are developed which lead to some necessary conditions for their existence. These necessary conditions are further studied to obtain many nonexistence results for harmonic morphisms of warped product type from Einstein manifolds. Received: 14 March 2006     

Harmonic maps from closed Riemannian manifolds with positive scalar curvature

It is well known there is no non-constant harmonic map from a closed Riemannian manifold of positive Ricci curvature to a complete Riemannian manifold with non-positive sectional curvature. By reducing the assumption on the Ricci curvature to one on the scalar curvature, such vanishing theorem cannot hold in general. This raises the question: “What information can we obtain from the existence of non-constant harmonic map?” This paper gives answer to this problem; the results obtained are optimal.     

Biharmonic maps, conformal deformations and the Hopf maps

We consider harmonic semi-conformal maps between two Riemannian manifolds. By deforming conformally the codomain metric, we construct new examples of non-harmonic biharmonic maps.     

Liouville theorem for harmonic maps with potential

Let M, N be complete manifolds, u:M→N be a harmonic map with potential H, namely, a critical point of the functional , where e(u) is the energy density of u. We will give a Liouville theorem for u with a class of potentials H's. Received: Received: 10 July 1997