On the singular set of stable-stationary harmonic maps (Q1963842)

It was proved by \textit{F.~Bethuel} [Manuscr. Math. 78, No.~4, 417-443 (1993; Zbl 0792.53039)] that stationary harmonic maps between compact Riemannian manifolds \(M^m\) and \(N^n\) are smooth outside a closed singular set of vanishing \((m-2)\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. All known examples of stationary harmonic maps, however, have singular sets of Hausdorff codimension at least \(3\), which is known to be the minimal codimension in the case of energy minimizing harmonic maps [cf. \textit{R.~Schoen} and \textit{K.~Uhlenbeck}, J. Differ. Geom. 17, 307-335, Correction ibid. 19, 329 (1982; Zbl 0521.58021)]. So there is a certain ``dimension gap'' in the present state of the regularity theory of stationary harmonic maps. The current paper is devoted to the interesting observation that the Hausdorff codimension of the singular set can indeed be shown to be at least \(3\) for every stationary harmonic map \(u:R^m\supset\Omega\to N\) which satisfies a stability inequality of the following form: There exist a constant \(A>0\) such that \(\int_\Omega|D\phi|^2\geq A\int_\Omega|Du|^2|\phi|^2\) for all \(\phi\in C^1_0(\Omega)\). (Since this is an essentially local property of \(u\), assuming \(\Omega\subset R^m\) is no restriction.) Such an inequality is known to be valid for minimizing harmonic maps if \(N\) is a standard sphere or some more general manifold with positive Ricci curvature and additional assumptions. Depending on an upper bound for the sectional curvature of \(N\), there are conditions for obtaining even better estimates for the dimension of the singular set in the spirit of [\textit{R.~Schoen} and \textit{K.~Uhlenbeck}, Invent. Math. 78, 89-100 (1984; Zbl 0555.58011)]. Similar results are given for \(p\)-harmonic maps (\(p\geq 2\)).