Polyharmonic almost complex structures (Q2665580)

Let \((M^n, g)\) be a compact Riemannian manifold, which admits a compatible almost complex structure. We denote by \(J_g\) the space of smooth orthogonal almost complex structures. In this paper, the authors consider the following functional, for all \(m\in \mathbb{N}^+\), \(J\in\mathcal{J}_{g}\), \[ \mathcal{E}_{m}(J)= \int_M \big|\Delta^{\frac{m}{2}} J \big|^2 dV_g:= \begin{cases} &\int_{M}|\nabla\Delta^{k-1}J|^{2}\,dV_g, \quad m=2k-1, \\ &\int_{M}|\Delta^{k}J|^{2}\,dV_g, \qquad m=2k, \\ \end{cases}\] where \(\nabla\) and \(\Delta\) are Levi-Civita connection and Laplace-Beltrami operator on \((M, g)\), respectively. The authors call the critical points of functional \(\mathcal{E}_{m}(J)\) \(m\)-harmonic almost complex structures. In this paper the functional \(\mathcal{E}_{m}(J)\) is considered on the Sobolev space \(W^{k,p}(J_g)\) of orthogonal almost complex structures. In this paper, the authors study the existence and regularity of weakly polyharmonic almost complex structures on a compact almost Hermitian manifold \(M^{2m}\). Such objects satisfy the elliptic system weakly, \([J, \Delta^m J]=0\). They prove a very general regularity theorem for semilinear systems in critical dimensions (with \textit{critical growth nonlinearities}). In particular the authors prove that weakly biharmonic almost complex structures are smooth in dimension four.