No label defined (Q3148045)

Quasi-harmonic maps were introduced in [\textit{W. Ding} and \textit{F. Lin}, J. Partial Differ. Equations 5, 13-22 (1992; Zbl 0765.58008)] to study the blow-up of the heat flow of harmonic maps from \({\mathbb R}^m\) into a Riemannian manifold \((N^n,h)\), and were defined as the critical points of the functional: \[ E(\phi) = \frac{1}{2} \int_{{\mathbb R}^m} |d\phi|^2 e^{-\frac{|x|^2}{4}} dx . \] The Euler-Lagrange equation associated to this variational principle is: \[ \Delta \phi - \frac{1}{2} \phi + A(\phi)(d\phi ,d\phi) = 0 , \] where \(A\) is the second fundamental form of the isometric embedding of \((N^n,h)\) in \({\mathbb R}^p\). This article proves, considering a particular deformation vector field, the existence of a constant \(\delta(n)\) such that a smooth stable quasi-harmonic map from \({\mathbb R}^m\) into a compact simply-connected \(\delta(n)\)-pinched Riemannian manifold, of dimension at least four, is constant if it has finite energy. Contrary to previous work [\textit{D. Hsu} and \textit{C. Zhou} Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 130, 3415-3422 (2002; Zbl 1003.58011)], a universal constant, 0.79, can be chosen for all dimensions.