The qualitative behavior at the free boundary for approximate harmonic maps from surfaces (Q2423410)

The authors consider the blow-up analysis for a sequence of maps \(\{u_n\}\) from a compact Riemann surface \(M\) with smooth boundary \(\partial M\) to a compact Riemannian manifold \(N\) with uniformly \(L^2\)-bounded tension fields \(\tau(u_n)\), uniformly bounded energy and with free boundary \(u_n(\partial M)\) on a submanifold \(K\subset N\). The main result of the paper shows that the energy identity and the no-neck property hold for \(\{u_n\}\). It is also shown that this result applies to the harmonic map heat flow with free boundary.