Energy identity for a class of approximate Dirac-harmonic maps from surfaces with boundary (Q1719941)

This paper is a contribution to the study of coupled field equations on Riemann surfaces, merging the theory of harmonic maps from surfaces with a mathematical version of the nonlinear supersymmetric quantum field theory. The corresponding action functional couples a term involving the energy of a map from a surface to some Riemannian manifold with a Dirac action for a nonlinear spinor field. The existence problem is not entirely solved, as standard variational methods do not apply to show existence of solutions under general conditions. In order to make progress, results about the behaviour at singularities that are known for harmonic maps need to be extended to the Dirac-harmonic case, and this is the main contribution of this paper: The authors study the blow-up process and show that all the energy that is removed from the map gets transferred to the bubbles that represent the singularity, thus obtaining an energy identity. The paper is carefully written and its introduction contains a good description of the mathematical framework to be used. Sections 2 and 3 consist on detailed proof of the results.