The gradient flow for gauged harmonic map in dimension two. II (Q2510364)

The author studies a model of gauged harmonic map and the associated gradient flow which combines harmonic map with Yang-Mills theory. He proves short-time existence of solutions of such gradient flows. When the domain manifold has dimension two, he proves that if \(T_0>0\) is the first singular time of the gradient flow then there exists a finite set of points such that both the connection 1-form \(A(t)\) and the solution \(\phi(t)\) of the gradient flow converge to \(A(T_0)\) and \(\phi(T_0)\) respectively in \(W_{\mathrm{loc}}^{1,\infty}\) away from the singular set \(\{x_i\}\). He also proves the loss of energy as \(t\to T_0\) and characterizes this as a bubbling phenomenon at \(\{x_i\}\) in terms of a finite set of non-trivial harmonic maps from \(\mathbb{R}^2\) to the target manifold.