Flows method in global analysis (Q1376679)

The paper contributes to the study of variational methods on a Sobolev space \(W^{r,p}(M,N)\). Here, \(M\) is a compact, connected and orientable Riemannian manifold, whereas \(N\) is a complete Riemannian manifold, isometrically embedded into \(\mathbb{R}^n\). More precisely, the author extends certain aspects of gradient flow methods to the case where the product \(rp\) may be smaller than the dimension \(m\) of \(M\). In such cases, \(W^{r,p}(M,N)\) may not have any manifold structure and it may be hard to construct flows, needed to characterize deformations in a variational analysis. A construction of such flows is given when \(C^r(M,N)\) is dense in \(W^{r,p}(M,N)\). Further technical assumptions are needed to obtain results for the following sort of questions: ``When is an infimum of a real functional \(f\) on \(W^{r,p}(M,N)\) over an arcwise connected component a critical point of \(f\)?'' and ``When does \(f/(u_k)\) converge to zero, \(\{u_k\}\) being a minimizing sequence of \(f\)?'',