The heat flow and harmonic maps between complete manifolds

We consider the existence, uniqueness and convergence for the long time solution to the harmonic map heat equation between two complete noncompact Riemannian manifolds, where the target manifold is assumed to have nonpositive curvature. As an application, we solve the Dirichlet problem at infinity for proper harmonic maps between two hyperbolic manifolds for a class of boundary maps. The boundary map under consideration has finite many points at which either it is not differentiable or has vanishing energy density.     

Locally minimizing harmonic maps from noncompact manifolds

By introducing the “relative energy”, we develop a new method for finding harmonic maps from noncompact complete Riemannian manifolds with prescribed asympototic behaviour at infinity. This method is an extension of the well known direct method of energy-minimization for compact domains. As an application of our method, we show that the Dirichlet problem at infinity with Hölder continuous boundary data for harmonic maps from a Cartan-Hadarmard manifold with bounded negative curvature into a compact manifold, has a locally minimizing solution which is smooth near infinity.     

Boundaries of non-compact harmonic manifolds

In this paper we consider non-compact non-flat simply connected harmonic manifolds. In particular, we show that the Martin boundary and Busemann boundary coincide for such manifolds. For any finite volume quotient we show that (up to scaling) there is a unique Patterson–Sullivan measure and this measure coincides with the harmonic measure. As an application of these results we prove that the geodesic flow on a non-flat finite volume harmonic manifold without conjugate points is topologically transitive.     

Boundary Harnack Principle and Martin Boundary at Infinity for Subordinate Brownian Motions

In this paper we study the Martin boundary of unbounded open sets at infinity for a large class of subordinate Brownian motions. We first prove that, for such subordinate Brownian motions, the uniform boundary Harnack principle at infinity holds for arbitrary unbounded open sets. Then we introduce the notion of κ-fatness at infinity for open sets and show that the Martin boundary at infinity of any such open set consists of exactly one point and that point is a minimal Martin boundary point.     

Existence of non-trivial harmonic functions on Cartan–Hadamard manifolds of unbounded curvature

The Liouville property of a complete Riemannian manifold M (i.e., the question whether there exist non-trivial bounded harmonic functions on M) attracted a lot of attention. For Cartan–Hadamard manifolds the role of lower curvature bounds is still an open problem. We discuss examples of Cartan–Hadamard manifolds of unbounded curvature where the limiting angle of Brownian motion degenerates to a single point on the sphere at infinity, but where nevertheless the space of bounded harmonic functions is as rich as in the non-degenerate case. To see the full boundary the point at infinity has to be blown up in a non-trivial way. Such examples indicate that the situation concerning the famous conjecture of Greene and Wu about existence of non-trivial bounded harmonic functions on Cartan–Hadamard manifolds is much more complicated than one might have expected.      

Evolution of harmonic maps on manifolds flat at infinity

The aim of this article is to prove a global existence result with small data for the heat flow for harmonic maps from a manifold flat at infinity into a compact manifold. By flat at infinity we mean that the growth rate of the volumes of the balls on the manifold is the same as in the flat space. This is true for any manifold for small enough radius, but is in general not true when the radius of the ball grows. So prescribing such a growth rate also at infinity selects a class of manifolds on which our result holds. In this setting estimates are available for the heat kernel and its gradient on the base manifold. From such estimates it is easy to get L ^p −L ^q bounds for the heat kernel. A contraction principle argument then yields a local existence result in a suitable Sobolev space and a global existence result for small data.     

Bounded harmonic maps on a class of manifolds

Without imposing any curvature assumptions, we show that bounded harmonic maps with image contained in a regular geodesic ball share similar behaviour at infinity with the bounded harmonic functions on the domain manifold.

     

Harmonic maps with singular boundary value from complex hyperbolic spaces into rank one symmetric spaces

In this paper we consider the Dirichlet problem at infinity of proper harmonic maps from noncompact complex hyperbolic space to a rank one symmetric space N of noncompact type with singular boundary data . Under some conditions on f, we show that the Dirichlet problem at infinity admits a harmonic map which assumes the boundary data f continuously. Received: March 11, 1999 / Accepted April 23, 1999     

Asymptotic Boundary Value Problem of Harmonic Maps via Harmonic Boundary

We prove that given any continuous data f on the harmonic boundary of a complete Riemannian manifold with image within a ball in the normal range, there exists a harmonic map from the manifold into the ball taking the same boundary value at each harmonic boundary point as that of f.     

A global weak solution to the Lorentzian harmonic map flow

We investigate a parabolic-elliptic system which is related to a harmonic map from a compact Riemann surface with a smooth boundary into a Lorentzian manifold with a warped product metric.We prove that there exists a unique global weak solution for this system which is regular except for at most finitely many singular points.     

Boundary slopes and the logarithmic limit set

The A-polynomial of a manifold whose boundary consists of a single torus is generalised to an eigenvalue variety of a manifold whose boundary consists of a finite number of tori, and the set of strongly detected boundary curves is determined by Bergman's logarithmic limit set, which describes the exponential behaviour of the eigenvalue variety at infinity. This enables one to read off the detected boundary curves of a multi-cusped manifold in a similar way to the 1-cusped case, where the slopes are encoded in the Newton polygon of the A-polynomial.     

ASYMPTOTIC BEHAVIOR OF HARMONIC MAPS FROM COMPLETE MANIFOLDS

51.IntroductionLetMbeanm-dimensionalcompletenoncompactRiemannianmanifold,pEM.P.LiandL.F.Turnintroducedin[8]avolumecomparisoncondition(VC)(seethedefinitionbelow).TheyobtainedsomeimportantanalyticpropertiesifMsatisfies(VC)andtheRiccicurvatureconditionRice(x)2--(m--1)K/(1 r(x))',wherer(x)isthedistancefromptox,K20isaconstant.ItisinterestingtoknowmoreabouttheanalysisonsuchamanifoldM.LetNbeacompleteRiemannianmanifoldwiththesectionalcurvatureKNboundedabovebysomeconstantK20.B.(T)denotestheg…     

Non-Wrapping of Hyperbolic Interval Bundles

We demonstrate a condition on the boundary at infinity of a hyperbolic interval bundle N that guarantees that, for any associated geometric limit, there is a compact core for N which embeds under the covering map. The proof involves an analysis of the geometry of torus cusps in a hyperbolic manifold, and techniques of Anderson, Canary and McCullough [AnCM]. Together with results of Holt–Souto [HS] this shows that the locus of non-local-connectivity of the space of once-punctured torus groups is not dense, and describes a relatively open subset of the boundary of the space of once-punctured torus groups consisting of points of non-self-bumping. Received: April 2006, Revision: May 2007, Accepted: December 2007     

Boundaries of right-angled Coxeter groups with manifold nerves

All abstract reflection groups act geometrically on non-positively curved geodesic spaces. Their natural space at infinity, consisting of (bifurcating) infinite geodesic rays emanating from a fixed base point, is called a boundary of the group.We will present a condition on right-angled Coxeter groups under which they have topologically homogeneous boundaries. The condition is that they have a nerve which is a connected closed orientable PL manifold.In the event that the group is generated by the reflections of one of Davis’ exotic open contractible n-manifolds (n?4), the group will have a boundary which is a homogeneous cohomology manifold. This group boundary can then be used to equivariantly Z-compactify the Davis manifold.If the compactified manifold is doubled along the group boundary, one obtains a sphere if n?5. The system of reflections extends naturally to this sphere and can be augmented by a reflection whose fixed point set is the group boundary. It will be shown that the fixed point set of each extended original reflection on the thus formed sphere is a tame codimension-one sphere.     

Harmonic functions of polynomial growth on certain complete manifolds

Given a complete manifold with a particular structure at infinity, we give the dimension of the space of harmonic functions with prescribed polynomial growth.     

Martin Kernels for Markov Processes with Jumps

We prove the existence of boundary limits of ratios of positive harmonic functions for a wide class of Markov processes with jumps and irregular (possibly disconnected) domains of harmonicity, in the context of general metric measure spaces. As a corollary, we prove the uniqueness of the Martin kernel at each boundary point, that is, we identify the Martin boundary with the topological boundary. We also prove a Martin representation theorem for harmonic functions. Examples covered by our results include: strictly stable Lévy processes in R ^d with positive continuous density of the Lévy measure; stable-like processes in R ^d and in domains; and stable-like subordinate diffusions in metric measure spaces.     

Harmonic functions of subordinate killed Brownian motion

In this paper we study harmonic functions of subordinate killed Brownian motion in a domain D. We first prove that, when the killed Brownian semigroup in D is intrinsic ultracontractive, all nonnegative harmonic functions of the subordinate killed Brownian motion in D are continuous and then we establish a Harnack inequality for these harmonic functions. We then show that, when D is a bounded Lipschitz domain, both the Martin boundary and the minimal Martin boundary of the subordinate killed Brownian motion in D coincide with the Euclidean boundary ∂D. We also show that, when D is a bounded Lipschitz domain, a boundary Harnack principle holds for positive harmonic functions of the subordinate killed Brownian motion in D.     

Sturdy Harmonic Functions and their Integral Representations

Sturdy harmonic functions constitute all but the least tractable of the positive harmonic functions in potential-theoretic settings. They are the uniform limits on compact sets of positive, bounded harmonic functions and are also produced by a simple integral representation on the boundary of a natural compactification of the space on which they are defined. The boundary of that compactification is metrizable, and more regular for the Dirichlet problem, in general, than is the Martin boundary if that boundary is even defined in the setting.