Boundary behavior of harmonic maps on non-smooth domains and complete negatively curved manifolds (Q1178629)

The Dirichlet problem and Fatou's theorem are central topics of investigation in harmonic analysis on bounded domains. The main point of this paper is to extend such properties of harmonic functions to harmonic maps whose images lie in a convex ball \(B_ \tau(p)\). This restriction is necessary since if the image of a harmonic map lies beyond a convex ball the results are not true in general. The radius of the convex ball can be controlled by the upper bound of the sectional curvature and the injectivity radius. In this paper the authors prove the following theorems. Theorem 1: Let \(\overline{\Omega}\) be regular for the Dirichlet problem for the Laplace-Beltrami operator \(\Delta\). For each \(\varphi \in C^ 0(\partial \Omega, \overline{B_ \tau(p)})\), there exists a unique \(U \in C^ 0(\overline{\Omega}, \overline{B_ \tau (p)}) \cap C^ \infty(\Omega,\overline{B_ \tau (p)})\) which is a harmonic map on \(\Omega\) and which equals \(\varphi\) on \(\partial \Omega\). More generally, they consider a general open, connected set \(\Omega\) in a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\). Let \(M(\Omega)\) be the Martin boundary of \(\Omega\) and \(\widehat{\Omega} = \Omega \cup M(\Omega)\). Then Theorem 1 is also true for \((\widehat{\Omega},M(\Omega))\) instead of \((\overline {\Omega},\partial \Omega)\). Theorem 2: A point \(x_ 0\) is regular for harmonic map systems with convex balls if and only if \(x_ 0\) satisfies the Wiener condition. For negatively curved manifolds the harmonic maps constructed in Theorem 1 have the following properties. Theorem 3. Let \(M\) be a complete, simply connected Riemannian manifold whose sectional curvatures \(K_ M\) satisfy \(-b^ 2 \leq K_ M \leq -a^ 2 < 0\). Let \(S(\infty)\) be the sphere at infinity of \(M\) and let \(\varphi: S(\infty) \to \overline{B_ \tau} (p) \in C^ \alpha\), \(\alpha \in [0,1]\). Then the harmonic map \(U\), \(U|_{S(\infty)} = \Phi\) satisfies the following decay estimates: (i) \(p(U(x),\varphi(x)) \leq Ce^{-(1/2)\delta r}\); (ii) for any \(\beta \in [0,1)\), \(| DU|_{C^{0,\beta}} \leq Ce^{-(1/2)\delta r}\), where \(r\) is the distance of \(x\) from some fixed point \(q \in M\), \(\delta > 0\), and \(C\) depends only on the geometry \((\overline{B_ \tau} (p), a,b,\varphi,\text{ dimension }\dots)\). If \(\varphi \in C^ 0(S(\infty), \overline{B_ \tau} (p))\) then the energy density \(e(u)(x) \to 0\) as \(x \to S(\infty)\). Finally, the authors prove Fatou's theorem for harmonic mappings into a convex ball: Theorem 4. Let \(\Omega\) denote either a complete, simply connected Riemannian manifold whose sectional curvatures \(K_ \Omega\) satisfy a negative pinching condition or a bounded Lipschitz domain contained in the interior of a complete Riemannian manifold \(M\). Then there is a one- to-one correspondence between \(\varphi \in C^ \infty(\partial \Omega, \overline {B_ \tau}(p))\) and harmonic maps \(U \in C^ \infty(\Omega,\overline{B_ \tau} (p))\) such that \(\lim_{x \to Q} U(x) = \varphi(\Omega)\), \(Q\)-a.e. with respect to the harmonic measure and \(x \to Q\) nontangentially.