Variational analysis of Toda systems (Q2358536)

This paper is a survey of some recent progress on Toda systems on a two dimensional surface. This type of systems arises in the study of self-dual non-abelian Chern-Simons models. It has also an interest in differential geometry. In particular, the author analyzes the variational structure of a non-homogeneous version of the Toda system of two equations depending on a parameter \(\rho=(\rho_1,\rho_2)\) and on a compact boundary-less Riemannian surface \(\Sigma\). Conditions on \(\rho\) are given to insure the existence of a solution. To this aim, min-max methods are used and barycentric sets of \(\Sigma\) and their topological join are considered.