The dimension and structure of the space of harmonic 2-spheres in the \(m\)-sphere (Q431638)

While harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds can be quite elusive, harmonic maps of \(2\)-spheres are automatically weakly conformal, making them branched minimal immersions. Their classification, however, remains an interesting question, even for special targets. In the current paper, harmonic maps \(S^2\to S^{2n}\) are considered, of course building on a large literature. Such mappings can be naturally assigned an integer degree \(d\), and their moduli spaces are objects of geometric interest. More precisely, the moduli space to be considered is that of \textit{linearly full} harmonic maps of degree \(d\), which means that their image is not contained in a proper sub-sphere of \(S^{2n}\). Several results have been known about these moduli spaces, but even their dimension has been only conjectured, as early as 1993 in \textit{[J. Bolton} and \textit{L. M. Woodward}, Sendai: Tôhoku Univ., Mathematical Institute, 165--173 (1993; Zbl 0913.58010)]. That conjecture is proven here: The dimension of the space of linearly full harmonic \(2\)-spheres of degree \(d\) in \(S^{2n}\) is \(2d+n^2\). More than that, the author gives a completely explicit algebraic method to construct any harmonic map from \(S^2\) to \(S^{2n}\). This method is inspired by the twistor lift approach for harmonic maps \(S^2\to S^4\) where the twistor space of \(S^4\) is biholomorphic to \({\mathbb C}P^3\). For higher dimensions, a corresponding relation fails to hold, but the twistor space of \(S^{2n}\) still is birationally equivalent to \({\mathbb C}P^{n(n+1)/2}\), which turns out to be good enough for local considerations. The moduli space of harmonic maps \(S^2\to S^{2n}\) of degree \(d\) is locally isomorphic to a space of holomorphic maps \(S^2\to{\mathbb C}P^{n(n+1)/2}\) of degree \(d\) and satisfying some differential system.