On polyharmonic maps into spheres in the critical dimension (Q2272076)

A distributional vector \(u\in W^{m,2} (\mathbb B^n,\mathbb S^{N -1})\) is called polyharmonic provided that, \[ \frac{d}{dt} E_m(\pi_{{\mathbb S}^{N -1}} ({ u} + t \Psi ))\big|_{t =0} \quad \forall\Psi \in C^\infty_0 (\mathbb B^{n},\mathbb R^{N})\tag{1} \] where \(\pi_{{S}^{N-1}}(y) =\frac{y}{| y |}\) denotes the nearest projection of \(\mathbb R^N\) onto \(\mathbb S^{N-1}\) and \(E_m\) denotes the functional, \[ E_m (u ) =\frac12 \int_{{\mathbb B}^{n}}| D^m u |^2 \,dx, \quad u(\mathbb B^n)\subset \mathbb S^{N-1}. \] The paper under review is devoted to the study of regularity for such maps \(u: \mathbb B^n\to\mathbb S^N\) in the critical dimension \(n=2m\) and to their weak convergence. The authors prove that every polyharmonic map \(u\in W^{m,2}(\mathbb B^n,\mathbb S^{N-1})\) is smooth in the critical dimension \(n=2m\) (Theorem 1.3), moreover if \(u\in W^{m,2}(\mathbb B^n,\mathbb S^{N -1})\) is the weak limit of a sequence of polyharmonic maps \((u_i)\subset W^{m,2}(\mathbb B^n,\mathbb S^{N-1})\) then \(u\) is also polyharmonic (Theorem 1.2). In the case \(n=2m\), the authors also remark that the nonlinearity of the Euler-Lagrange equations (1) is critical. Independently, F. Hélein used BMO-methods to proved that harmonic mappings from a two-dimensional disk into a compact manifold are smooth.