Short time existence of the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps on closed manifolds (Q1688771)

Dirac-harmonic maps, introduced in [\textit{Q. Chen} et al., Math. Z. 254, No. 2, 409--432 (2006; Zbl 1103.53033)], are the critical points of a functional motivated by the supersymmetric non-linear sigma model from quantum field theory. They also generalize the subject of harmonic maps and harmonic spinors. Let \(M\) be a compact Riemann spin manifold with a fixed spin structure and \(N\) a compact Riemannian manifold. Let \(\Sigma M\) be the complex spinor bundle over \(M\). For a map \(f: M \to N\) and a spinor \(\psi \in \Gamma(\Sigma M \otimes f^*TN)\), consider the functional \[ (f, \psi) \mapsto \int_M \left(|df|^2 + (\psi, \, /\kern -7.0 pt D^f \psi )\right)\, dV, \] where \((\, \cdot\,, \cdot\,)\) is the inner product induced by the real part of the natural Hermitian inner product on \(\Sigma M\) and the Riemannian metric on \(N\). Moreover, \(/\kern -7.0 pt D^f \) is the Dirac operator of the twisted Dirac bundle \(\Sigma M \otimes f^*TN\) which is locally defined by \[ /\kern -7.0 pt D^f \psi = (/\kern -7.0 pt D \,\psi^i)\otimes s_i + (e_\alpha \cdot \psi^i ) \otimes \nabla_{e_\alpha}^{f^*TN} s_i. \] Here \(\psi = \psi^i \otimes s_i\), the \(\psi^i\) are usual spinors on \(M\), \((s_i)\) is a local frame of \(f^*TN\), \((e_\alpha)\) is a local frame of \(TM\), and \(/\kern -7.0 pt D\) is the usual Dirac operator acting on sections of \(\Sigma M\). The critical points of the above functional are called Dirac-harmonic maps. They are characterized by the equation \[ \begin{cases} \tau(f) = {\mathcal R}(f, \psi),\\ /\kern -7.0 pt D^f \psi = 0. \end{cases} \] Here \(\tau(f)\) is the tension field of \(f\) and \[ \mathcal R(f, \psi) = \frac{1}{2}(\psi^i, e_\alpha \cdot \psi^j)R^{TN} \left(\partial_{x^i}\circ f, \partial_{x^j}\circ f\right) df(e_\alpha) \] for \(\psi = \psi^i \otimes (\partial_{x^i}\circ f )\). Not many concrete examples for Dirac-harmonic maps are known, and to get general existence for Dirac-harmonic maps, the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t u = \tau(u) = {\mathcal R}(u, \psi),\\ /\kern -7.0 pt D^f \psi = 0 \end{cases} \] was introduced in [\textit{Q. Chen}, ``Estimates for solutions of Dirac equations and an application to a geometric elliptic-parabolic problem'', J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) (to appear)]. In that paper, short time existence and uniqueness of the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps was also shown when \(M\) has nonempty boundary. In this paper under review, the author proves short time existence of the heat flow for Dirac-harmonic maps on closed manifolds, i.e., compact manifolds without boundary.