Heat flows of harmonic maps with potential into manifolds with nonpositive curvature (Q1401608)

This paper discusses the gradient flow associated to the Dirichlet integral for maps between manifolds, modified by a potential, i.e.\ \(E_H(u):= \int[{1\over2}| Du| ^2-H\circ u]\) for some smooth potential function \(H\) on the target manifold. Here the case of nonpositively curved target manifolds is considered, a condition that is known to guarantee smooth solutions in the \(H=0\) case. It is proved that, if the Hessian of the potential is bounded from above by a constant that is smaller than the first eigenvalue of \(\Delta\) on the domain manifold, then the heat flow for harmonic maps with potential admits unique smooth eternal solution for smooth initial and boundary values. Moreover, as time goes to infinity, the solution converges to a smooth harmonic map with potential. It is shown by a counter-example that the bound on the Hessian is optimal in this statement.