Energy identity for a class of approximate biharmonic maps into sphere in dimension four (Q1946327)

This paper is concerned with limiting behavior of weakly convergent sequences of approximate biharmonic maps in dimension four. A map \(u\in W^{2,2}(\Omega, S^k)\) is called an approximate biharmonic map if there exists a bi-tensor field \(h\in L^1_{loc}(\Omega,R^{k+1})\) such that \[ \Delta^2 u+(|\Delta u|^2+\Delta|\nabla u|^2+2\langle \nabla u,\nabla \Delta u\rangle )u=h, \] in the distributional sense. If \(h\equiv 0\), then \(u\) is called a biharmonic map to \(S^k\). The main result of the paper is as follows: Assume the space dimension is \(n=4\) and let \(\{u_n\}\subset W^{2,2}(\Omega,S^k)\) be a sequence of the approximate biharmonic maps with the corresponding sequence \(\{h_m\}\) of bi-tensor fields. Assume that (a) \(\{u_m\}\) is bounded in \(W^{2,2}(\Omega,S^k)\) and \(u_m\rightarrow u\) weakly in \(W^{2,2}\); (b) \(\{h_m\}\) of bi-tensor field is bounded in \(L^p\) for \(p>1\) and \(h_m\rightarrow h\) weakly in \(L^p\). Let also \[ M:=\sup_{m}(\|u_m\|_{W^{2,2}}+\|h_m\|_{L^p})<\infty. \] Then: (i) \(u\) is an approximate biharmonic map to \(S^k\) with bi-tensor field \(h\); (ii) There exists a non-negative integer \(L=L(M)\) and \(L\) points \(x_1,x_2,\dots, x_L\in \Omega\) such that \(u\rightarrow u\) strongly in \(W^{2,2}_{loc}\cap C^0_{loc}(\Omega\setminus\{x_1,x_2,\dots,x_L\},s^k)\); (iii) For any \(1\leq i\leq L\) there exists a positive integer \(L_i=l_i(M)\) and \(L_i\) biharmonic maps \(\omega_{ij}\) (\(1\leq j\leq L_i\)) from \(R^4\) to \(S^k\) such \(\omega_{ij}\) have finite hessian energy and \[ \lim_{m\rightarrow \infty}\int_{B_{r_i}(x_i)}|\nabla^2 u_m|^2=\int_{B_{r_i}(x_i)}|\nabla^2 u|^2+\sum_{j=1}^{L_i} \int_{R^4}|\nabla^2 \omega_{ij}|^2, \] and \[ \lim_{m\rightarrow \infty}\int_{B_{r_i}(x_i)}|\nabla u_m|^4=\int_{B_{r_i}(x_i)}|\nabla u|^4+\sum_{j=1}^{L_i} \int_{R^4}|\nabla \omega_{ij}|^4, \] where \[ r_i=\frac{1}{2}\min_{1\leq j\leq L,j\neq i}\{|x_i-x_j|, \text{dist}(x_i,\partial \Omega)\}. \]