Legendrian energy minimizers. I: Heisenberg group target (Q5944884)

In [Commun. Anal. Geom. 1, 561-659 (1993; Zbl 0862.58004)] \textit{N. J. Korevaar} and \textit{R. M. Schoe}n introduced Sobolev spaces of maps with target a metric space \(X\). They showed that there is a satisfactory existence and regularity theory for energy minimizers whenever \(X\) has non-positive curvature in the sense of Alexandrov. In the present paper the authors study the case that \(X\) is the Heisenberg group with its canonical Carnot-Caratheodory metric. They characterize Sobolev maps in this case (with domain an open subset of \({\mathbb R}^n\)). Since this Carnot-Caratheodory space \(X\) does not have curvature bounded from above the general existence and regularity theory does not apply. The authors prove an existence theorem for energy minimizers. Uniqueness fails as can already be seen from the case of geodesics. The authors also prove Lipschitz continuity of critical points of the energy in the case of a 2-dimensional domain.