Distributions on Riemannian manifolds, which are harmonic maps. (Q1411694)

The paper exhibits new examples of harmonic maps between compact Riemannian manifolds. Considering a Riemannian fibration, a section is called harmonic if it is harmonic as a map from the base manifold to the total space. In the case when the fibres are totally geodesic, the Euler-Lagrange equations for such sections are formulated. For distributions, which are sections of a Grassmannian bundle, these equations are described in terms of the geometry of the base manifolds. Examples of harmonic distributions are constructed when the base manifolds are homogeneous spaces and the integral submanifolds are totally geodesic. In particular, the authors show that all generalized Hopf fibrations define harmonic maps into the Grassmannian bundles with the standard metric.