Bi-eigenmaps and biharmonic submanifolds in a sphere (Q2169847)

Harmonic eigenmaps to spheres are crucial ingredients in the construction of nontrivial harmonic maps with symmetries. They solve the harmonic map equation \(\Delta\phi=-|d\phi|^2\phi\) and have a constant energy density \(|d\phi|^2\equiv\lambda\), hence \(\Delta\phi=-\lambda\phi\), and the components are harmonic eigenfunctions in the classical sense. The focus of the paper here is to find things like that in the biharmonic setting. Biharmonic maps are stationary points of \(\int|\tau(\phi)|^2\), where \(\phi\) maps to some manifold \(N\) and \(\tau(\phi)(x)\) is the projection of \(\Delta\phi(x)\) to \(T_{\phi(x)}N\). There are at least two natural generalizations of the eigenfunctions of \(\Delta\) to the biharmonic setting. If \(\Delta^2f=\mu f\) for some \(\mu\in{\mathbb R}\) and some \({\mathbb R}\)-valued function \(f\), then \(f\) is called a bi-eigenfunction. If \(\Delta^2f=-\rho\Delta f\), then \(f\) is called a buckling eigenfunction. Clearly, every eigenfunction of \(\Delta\) is also both a bi-eigenfunction and a buckling eigenfunction. The paper is a short note in which some basic facts are proven that connect the concepts of eigenfunctions with questions on biharmonic maps. All of them are quite elementary, but they may prove interesting for constructing more nontrivial biharmonic maps.