Evolution of harmonic maps on manifolds flat at infinity (Q543478)

The article is concerned with the classical question of global existence for the harmonic map heat flow. In [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 15, No.~2, 237--244 (1990; Zbl 0708.35045)], \textit{A. Soyeur} has proven global existence on \(\mathbb R^m\) and controlled convergence to a constant, provided that the initial data are in \(W^{1,p}\cap L^\infty\) for some \(p>m\) and are small in \(\dot{W}^{1,m}\). In the current paper, this result is generalized for the flow from a class of manifolds to compact manifolds. The main assumption on the domain manifold is that its volume growth is the same as on \(\mathbb R^m\), asymptotically. Moreover, it must satisfy some Faber-Krahn inequality relating volumes and first Dirichlet eigenvalues of subsets. Finally, some inequality for the heat kernel is also needed. Under these assumptions, Soyeur's result is recovered completely for the more general domain manifold. Several kinds of heat kernel estimates are the key for proving this result.