Heat flow of Yang-Mills-Higgs functionals in dimension two (Q524260)

The heat flow of the Yang-Mills-Higgs functional is considered here over a Riemannian surface \(\Sigma\), where the connection form \(A\) belongs to a principal \(G\)-bundle over \(\Sigma\) for any compact Lie group \(G\), and the field \(\phi\) is a section of a \(G\)-bundle over \(\Sigma\) whose fiber is a compact symplectic manifold \(M\) equipped with a Hamiltonian action of \(G\) with moment map \(\mu:M\to{\mathfrak g}^*\). For such data, the Yang-Mills-Higgs functional can be written as \(\|F_A\|^2_{L^2}+\|D_A\phi\|^2_{L^2}+\|\mu(\phi)-c\|^2\), where \(c\in{\mathfrak g}^*\) is some fixed central element. For the heat flow of that functional, it is proven that the Cauchy problem admits a global weak solution for any initial data in \(H^1\). Moreover, that solution is smooth (in an appropriate gauge local in time) away from finitely many points in spacetime. At each of those finitely many points, at least one bubble separates, represented by a harmonic map \(S^2\to M\). That is, bubbling occurs only in the \(\phi\)-component. There may be a finite set of bubbles separating at a singular time in form of a ``bubble tree''. The YMH-energies of a complete collection of such bubbles add up to give exactly the energy loss of the flow at that singular time. A similar statement holds for a possible bubble tree at temporal infinity.