Some new examples for nonuniqueness of the evolution problem of harmonic maps (Q1281363)

The main result of the paper is to show nonuniqueness for the heat flow of harmonic maps from the unit ball \(B^3\) into the unit sphere \(S^2\) where the weak solutions satisfy the monotonicity property (MP) as follows. For any \(\theta\) in \(C^\infty_0(B^3)\), any compact \(K\) of the interior of \(\{\theta=1\}\), there exists a constant \(C\) such that for a.e. \(t_1\), \(t_2\) with \(t_1< t_2\) and for \(a\in K\), \[ \begin{multlined} t^{-{1\over 2}}_1\int_{B^3} \theta^2|\nabla u|^2(x, t_2- t_1)\exp{-|x- a|^2\over 4t_1}\leq\\ C(t^{{1\over 2}}_2- t^{{1\over 2}}_1)+ t^{-{1\over 2}}_2 \int_{B^3} \theta^2|\nabla u_0|^2\exp {-|x- a|^2\over 4t_2}.\end{multlined}\tag{MP} \] An open problem was pointed by Coron for the evolution problem of harmonic maps whether weak solutions of heat flow with the monotonicity property (MP) or monotonicity inequality (MP) for all regular points in \textit{Y. Chen} and \textit{M. Struwe} [Math. Z. 201, No. 1, 83-103 (1989; Zbl 0652.58024)] are unique. The heat flow is defined as follows. We say \(u(x,t)= M\times [0,\infty)\to N\) is a weak solution of the following evolution problem: \[ \begin{aligned} {\partial u\over\partial t} &= \Delta u+|\nabla u|^2 u,\\ u(x,0)& = u_0(x)\quad\text{for }x\in B^3,\\ u(x,t) & = u_0(x)\quad\text{for }(x,t)\in\partial B^3\times [0,\infty).\end{aligned} \] The author gives a negative answer to the above problem under the assumption of some existence of initial data \(u_0\). He shows that there exists some initial data \(u_0\) such that the evolution problem has infinitely many weak solutions which satisfy the same monotonicity inequality (MP). For related results see \textit{Y. Chen} and \textit{M. Struwe} [loc. cit.], \textit{J.-M. Coron} [Ann. Inst. Henri Poincaré, Anal. Non Linéaire 7, No. 4, 335-344 (1990; Zbl 0707.58017)] and \textit{C. Poon} [J. Differ. Geom. 34, No. 1, 165-168 (1991; Zbl 0738.58019)].