Heat flow for horizontal harmonic maps into a class of Carnot-Carathéodory spaces (Q2566563)

The authors consider the total space \(X\) of a Riemannian submersion \(\pi: X\to B\) as a Carnot-Carathéodory space with the horizontal distribution \(\mathcal H\). They assume that \(\mathcal H\) satisfies the Chow condition and that the sectional curvatures in \(\mathcal H\) are \(\leq 0\). Using a suitable heat-flow technique along \(\mathcal H\) they prove that a horizontal smooth map \(g:M\to X\) of a compact Riemannian manifold \(M\) is horizontally homotopic to a horizontal harmonic map \(u:M\to X\). There is an extensive treatment of examples of \(\pi: X\to B\) in homogeneous spaces.