The Dirichlet-problem for harmonic maps from the disk into a Lorentzian warped product (Q2366601)

This paper is devoted to the existence of harmonic maps between two particular manifolds, the first is a Riemannian manifold and the second, a Lorentzian manifold. Let \(\Omega\) be the open unit disk in \(\mathbb{R}^ 2\) with the induced Riemannian structure and let \(N=S^ 2 \times_ \beta \mathbb{R}\) be the Lorentzian warped product of the unit Riemannian sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^ 3 \times \mathbb{R}\) where \(\beta:S^ 2 \to]0,+\infty[\) is a given \(C^ 1\) function. [See \textit{B. O'Neill}, ``Semi-Riemannian geometry. With applications to relativity'' (1983; Zbl 0531.53051) for the definition of warped product.] The main result of this paper is the following theorem. Let \(\gamma=(\nu,\tau) \in C^ 2(\partial \Omega,S^ 2 \times \mathbb{R})\); then, if \(\nu\) is not constant, there exists a harmonic map \(w \in C^ \infty (\Omega,N) \cap C^{2,\delta} (\overline\Omega,N)\) such that \(w |_{\partial \Omega}=\gamma\). Because the target manifold is a Lorentzian manifold, the energy functional is not bounded from below and a specific technique is developed to prove the theorem.