Solenoidal unit vector fields with minimum energy (Q1763037)

Let \(M\) be a compact Riemannian manifold and let \(C^{\infty}(M,T_{1}M) \) be the set of all \(C^{\infty}\)-smooth unit vector fields on \(M\). The author presents a number of examples of unit vector fields \(V\in C^{\infty}( M,T_{1}M) \) with the following properties: (1) \(V\) is critical for the energy functional on \(C^{\infty }( M,T_{1}M) \). (2) If \(V\in C^{\infty}( M,T_{1}M) \) is solenoidal (i.e., divergence free), then \(V\) minimizes the energy functional on \(C^{\infty }( M,T_{1}M) \). Let \(A\) denote the complex algebra \(\mathbb{C}\) or quaternion algebra \(\mathbb{H}\). The main results state: Let \(S=S^{2n+1}\) or \(S^{4n+1}\) be the unit sphere in \(A^{n+1}\) and let \(D\) be the distribution on \(S\) given by \(D_{q}=( \operatorname {Im}A) q\subset T_{q}S\). For each positive \(s\), let \(g_{s}\) denote the Riemannian metric on \(S\) such that \(g_{s}( u,v) =0,\) \(g_{s}( v,v) =\| v\| ^{2}\) and \(g_{s}( u,u) =s^{2}\| u\| ^{2}\), for every \(u\in D_{q}\), \(v\in D_{q} ^{\bot}\) and \(q\in S\). Then, for every unit vector \(w\in\text{Im} ( A) \), the unit vector field \(W\) (in the metric \(g_{s}\)), defined by \(W_{q}=wq/s,\) satisfies property (1). In addition, it satisfies property (2) if \(s^{2}\in(0,1],s^{2}\in[ 1/( 2n+3) ,1] \), respectively.