Harmonic rough isometries into Hadamard space (Q1299460)

A Hadamard space is a nonpositively curved and geodesically complete metric space. A map \(u:X\to Y\) between metric spaces is called a rough isometry if there exist positive constants \(k\), \(b\) and \(c\) and a map \(v:Y\to X\) such that the following holds: For \(x_1,x_2\in X\) we have \(k^{-1}d(x_1,x_2) -b \leq d(u(x_1),u(x_2)) \leq kd(x_1,x_2)+b\), and \(d(u(v(y)),y)\leq c\) for all \(y\in Y\). The purpose of the paper is to give a generalization of the following conjecture of \textit{R. M. Schoen} [Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 143, 179-200 (1993; Zbl 0806.58013)] to higher dimensional real hyperbolic spaces \(H_R^n\) and other rank-1 symmetric spaces: The set of quasi-symmetric homeomorphisms of \(S^1\) has a one-to-one correspondence to the set of quasi-conformal harmonic diffeomorphisms of \(H^2_R\). The generalized conjecture that the authors propose is: Let \(M\) be a rank-1 symmetric space. Then every quasi-conformal map from the boundary at infinity of \(M\) to itself can be extended uniquely to a harmonic rough isometry from \(M\) to itself. To verify that the latter conjecture really generalizes the former one, it is proved that a harmonic map from the real hyperbolic plane to itself is a quasi-conformal diffeomorphism if and only if it is a rough isometry. For some special cases it is proved or cited from previous papers that the existence part of the conjecture holds. In the second section, the uniqueness part of the conjecture is proved. This actually works in a more general setting when \(M\) is a Cartan-Hadamard manifold and \(N\) is only assumed to be a Hadamard space with strictly negative curvature, and both \(M\) and \(N\) have cocompact isometry groups. Then every harmonic rough isometry between \(M\) and \(N\) is uniquely determined by its boundary map. Finally, it is proved that Schoen's original conjecture holds for a certain class of quasi-symmetric homeomorphisms.