Stability of singularities of minimizing harmonic maps (Q1120867)

The authors establish a stability theorem for energy minimizing maps from a bounded domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) to the 2-sphere \(S^ 2\). Theorem. If \(\Omega\) is a smooth bounded domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\), \(\psi \in Lip(\partial \Omega,S^ 2)\) and v is the unique energy-minimizing map from \(\Omega\) to \(S^ 2\) with \(v| \partial \Omega \equiv \psi\). There exists a positive number \(\beta\) and, for any positive \(\epsilon\), a positive number \(\delta\) so that for any \(\phi \in C^{1,\alpha}(\partial \Omega,S^ 2)\) with \(\| \phi -\psi \|_{Lip}\leq \delta\) and for any energy-minimizing \(u\in H^ 1(\Omega,S^ 2)\) with \(u| \partial \Omega \equiv \phi\), one has \(\| u-v\circ \eta \|_ C\beta \leq \epsilon\) for some bi-Lipschitz transformation \(\eta\) of \(\Omega\) with \(\| \eta - id_{\Omega}\|_{Lip}\leq \epsilon.\) In particular, \(\eta\) maps the singularities of u onto the singularities of v. The stability theorem implies an interior estimate on the distance between singularities. In the final section the authors give an example of a smooth function \(\phi\) : \(S^ 2\to S^ 2\) which serves as boundary values for two distinct energy-minimizing maps, one having singularities and one free of singularities.