Spherical twists, stationary paths and harmonic maps from generalised annuli into spheres (Q421138)

A class of maps called spherical twists are introduced here, in connection with the Euler-Lagrange equation (the so called harmonic map equation). The author shows the discrepancy between even and odd dimension, in the sense that for even \(n\), one can obtain infinitely many smooth solutions modulo isometries, whereas for odd n, there exist one or none solution. The qualitative features of the solutions are discussed, in view of their novel and explicit representation through the exponential map of the compact Lie group \(\mathrm{SO}(n)\).