Large solutions for biharmonic maps in four dimensions (Q2385158)

(Extrinsically) biharmonic maps are critical points of the Hessian or bi-energy \(\int| \Delta u| ^2\), where \(u\) is a mapping between Riemannian manifolds. In the paper, such critical points are constructed in the case where the domain ist \(\mathbb R^4\) or its unit disk and the target is \(S^4\). Note that \(4\) is the most natural dimension to consider for the bi-energy. It is proven that there is a critical point \(u:\mathbb R^4\to S^4\) with nonzero topological degree. Moreover, there are boundary data for the problem on the ball for which the infimum of the bi-energy is achieved in at least two different relative homotopy classes. A key step in the proof is to attach a bubble to a given map in such a way that some bi-energy is gained (compared to the sum of bi-energies of map and bubble). This requires an explicit construction of sewing the mappings together along a collar with sophisticated estimates, in the tradition of \textit{H. C. Wente} [Math.\ Z. 120, 277--288 (1971; Zbl 0214.11101)].