Stable \({\mathcal F}\)-harmonic maps between Finsler manifolds (Q1958717)

Let \(\phi : M\mapsto \overline{M}\) be a smooth map between Finsler manifolds such that \(\ker(d\phi)\) is null. Let \({\mathcal F}:[0,+\infty)\mapsto [0,\infty)\) be a \(C^2\) function such that \({\mathcal F}'>0\) on \((0, \infty)\). The \({\mathcal F}\)- energy density is the function \(e_{{\mathcal F}} (\phi): SM \mapsto \mathbb{R} \) defined by \(e_{{\mathcal F}} (\phi)={\mathcal F}(\frac{1}{2}|d\phi|^2)\), where \(SM\) is the indicatrix bundle of \(M\) and the norm of \(d\phi\) is taken with respect to the pull-back of the Sasaki metric from \(TM \setminus\{0\}\) to \(SM\). The \({\mathcal F}\)- energy functional is \(E_{{\mathcal F}} (\phi) = \frac{1}{C_{n-1}}\int_{SM}e_{{\mathcal F}}(\phi)\, dV_{SM}\), where \(C_{n-1}\) denotes the volume of the unit Euclidian sphere \(S^{n-1}\). A critical point of the \({\mathcal F}\)- energy functional is called an \({\mathcal F}\)-harmonic map. The author derives the first and second variation formulae for the \({\mathcal F}\)-harmonic maps and proves that, if \({\mathcal F}''\leq 0\), \(n\geq3\) or \({\mathcal F}''<0\), \(n=2\), there is no nondegenerate stable \({\mathcal F}\)-harmonic map between a Riemannian unit sphere \(S^n\) and any compact Finsler manifold.