The stress-energy tensor for biharmonic maps

Using Hilbert’s criterion, we consider the stress-energy tensor associated to the bienergy functional. We show that it derives from a variational problem on metrics and exhibit the peculiarity of dimension four. First, we use this tensor to construct new examples of biharmonic maps, then classify maps with vanishing or parallel stress-energy tensor and Riemannian immersions whose stress-energy tensor is proportional to the metric, thus obtaining a weaker but high-dimensional version of the Hopf Theorem on compact constant mean curvature immersions. We also relate the stress-energy tensor of the inclusion of a submanifold in Euclidean space with the harmonic stress-energy tensor of its Gauss map. S. Montaldo was supported by PRIN-2005 (Italy): Riemannian Metrics and Differentiable Manifolds. C. Oniciuc was supported by a CNR-NATO (Italy) fellowship and by the Grant CEEX, ET, 5871/2006 (Romania).