Partial regularity for stationary harmonic maps at a free boundary

Let and be smooth Riemannian manifolds, of the dimension n≥2 with nonempty boundary, and compact without boundary. We consider stationary harmonic maps u ∈ H¹(, ) with a free boundary condition of the type u(∂) ⊂ Γ, given a submanifold Γ⊂. We prove partial boundary regularity, namely (sing(u))=0, a result that was until now only known in the interior of the domain (see [B]). The key of the proof is a new lemma that allows an extension of u by a reflection construction. Once the partial regularity theorem is known, it is possible to reduce the dimension of the singular set further under additional assumptions on the target manifold and the submanifold Γ.