Boundary partial regularity for a class of biharmonic maps (Q453747)

Let \(\Omega\) be a bounded smooth domain in \({\mathbb R}^n\) with \(n \geq 5\) and let \(N\) be a compact Riemannian manifold without boundary, which is embedded into some Euclidean space. The paper deals with the regularity of stationary biharmonic maps, which are critical points of the Hessian energy functional \[ E_2(v) = \int_\Omega |\nabla^2 v|^2\, dv \] and are, in addition, critical points with respect to the domain variations. Given \(\varphi \in C^\infty(\Omega_\delta, N)\) for some \(\delta >0\), assume that \(u \in W^{2,2}(\Omega, N)\) under the boundary condition \(\left(u, \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu}\right)\bigg|_{\partial \Omega} = \left(\varphi, \frac{\partial \varphi}{\partial \nu}\right)\bigg|_{\partial \Omega}\) is a stationary biharmonic map. Here \(\Omega_\delta = \{x \in \overline{\Omega}\,:\, {\text{dist}}(x, \partial \Omega) < \delta\,\}\) and \(\nu\) is the unit outward normal of \(\partial \Omega\). The authors prove that if \(u\) satisfies some boundary monotonicity inequality, then there exists a closed subset \({\mathcal S}(u) \subset \Omega\) with \({\mathcal H}^{n-4}({\mathcal S}(u)) = 0\) such that \(u \in C^\infty(\overline{\Omega}\setminus {\mathcal S}(u), N)\).