Harmonic two-spheres in compact symmetric spaces, revisited (Q1380093)

The authors give a new description of harmonic maps from the 2-sphere \(S^2\) to a compact symmetric space \(G/K\), using a method suggested by Morse theory. The method leads to surprisingly short proofs of most of the known results, and also to new results. The idea of this method is as follows: given a harmonic map \(\varphi\), a (special) family of ``dressing transformations'' is applied to obtain a family of harmonic maps \(\{\varphi^t\}_{t\in(0, \infty)}\), such that \(\varphi^\infty =\lim_{t\to \infty} \varphi^t\) is a harmonic map obtained via the twistor construction. This leads to explicit results because the family \(\{\varphi^t\}\) is obtained by applying the gradient flow of a certain well-known Morse function (to an associated map). The main technical result of this paper is a classification of harmonic maps into types, the types (for each fixed \(G\) or \(G/K)\) being indexed by a finite number of elements in the Lie algebra \({\mathfrak g}\) of \(G\). Geometric properties of harmonic maps are reflected by Lie-algebraic properties of these elements. As the first main application of this, the authors give an estimate of the ``minimal uniton number'' \(r(\varphi)\) of a harmonic map \(\varphi\), and show how to obtain the maximal values for all \(G\) and \(G/K\). The second main application of this is a ``Weierstrass formula'', by means of which harmonic maps \(S^2\to G\) or \(G/K\) are described explicitly in terms of meromorphic functions on \(S^2\) (i.e., rational functions). This includes the explicit formulae which were known for \(G/K =S^n\) or \(\mathbb{C} P^n\), and underlies Wood's formulae for \(G=U_n\). It generalizes a Weierstrass formula of R. Bryant for harmonic maps obtained via the twistor construction (see \textit{R. L. Bryant} [J. Differ. Geom. 17, 455-473 (1982; Zbl 0498.53046); Duke Math. J. 52, 223-261 (1985; Zbl 0582.58011)]). Finally, there are two short appendices: Appendix A. Harmonic maps of low uniton number; Appendix B. The Birkhoff decomposition.