Subelliptic biharmonic maps (Q471999)

The classical setting for harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds originated by J. Eells has several natural generalizations. First, already initiated by J. Eells and L. Lemaire, replacing the norm of the differential of the map by the norm of its tension field, one arrives at the concept of biharmonic map. Second, as initiated by J. Jost and C.-J. Xu, an orthonormal set of moving frames that defines the energy density can be replaced by a Hormander system of vector fields to arrive at another natural generalization of harmonicity. Finally, taking the domain a compact, strictly pseudo-convex CR-manifold with contact form and associated Levi form, the Jost-Xu setting can be adapted to define an energy functional yielding pseudo-harmonic maps. In the present paper the authors mold these concepts into one, and define a bienergy functional in CR-setting. They then term the resulting critical points as subelliptic biharmonic maps. In addition to deriving a first variation formula, they show that a map is subelliptic biharmonic if and only if its precomposition by the projection of the natural circle bundle over the CR-domain is biharmonic with respect to the Fefferman metric.