Refinement of Hélein's conjecture on boundedness of conformal factors when \(n = 3\) (Q6156101)

Let \(D_{1}\) the closed unit disk centered at the origin in \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\), and \(\mathbb{S}^{2}\) the unit sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\). The purpose of the paper is to prove refinements of \textit{F. Hélein}'s conjecture in his book [Harmonic maps, conservation laws and moving frames. Transl. from the French. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002; Zbl 1010.58010)]. The first main result proves that if \(u\in W^{1,2}(D_{1},\mathbb{S}^{2})\) satisfies \[ \int_{D_{1}}\left\vert \partial _{1}\mathbf{n}\times \partial _{2}\mathbf{n} \right\vert dX\leq 4\pi -\delta \] for the normal vector \(\mathbf{n}\) and some \(\delta>0\), then there exist \(\Omega _{i}\in L^{2}(D_{1})\) with \[\left\Vert \Omega _{i}\right\Vert _{L^{2}(D_{1})}\leq \frac{8\pi }{ \delta }\left\Vert \nabla u\right\Vert _{L^{2}(D_{1})},\] \(i=1,2\), such that for every \(\zeta \in C_{0}^{\infty }(D_{1})\) there holds \[\int_{D_{1}}\Phi \zeta dX=\int_{D_{1}}(\Omega _{2}\partial _{1}\zeta -\Omega _{1}\partial _{2}\zeta )dX,\] where \(\Phi (X)=\mathbf{n}(X)\cdot (\partial _{1}\mathbf{n}(X)\times \partial _{2}\mathbf{n}(X))\).\ Moreover \(\Phi \) satisfies \(\left\Vert \Phi \right\Vert _{W^{-1,2}(D_{1})}\leq \frac{c}{\delta }\) for some constant \(c\). For the proof, the authors first establish estimates on \(\Phi \) written as \( \Phi =\partial _{2}\omega _{1}-\partial _{1}\omega _{2}\). They introduce a parametrized family of normal vector fields and use a parameter continuation argument. The second main result proves that if \(u\in W^{1,2}(D_{1},\mathbb{S}^{2})\) and \(\mathcal{A}\subset \mathbb{S}^{2}\) is a Borel set with positive measure \(\mu \), then there exist \(\Omega _{i}\in L^{2}(D_{1})\), \(i=1,2\), such that for every \(\zeta \in C_{0}^{\infty }(D_{1}) \) \[\int_{D_{1}}\Phi \zeta dX=\frac{4\pi }{\mu }\int_{\mathcal{F}}\Phi \zeta dX+\int_{D_{1}}(\Omega _{2}\partial _{1}\zeta -\Omega _{1}\partial _{2}\zeta )dX,\] and \[\left\Vert \Omega _{i}\right\Vert _{L^{2}(D_{1})}\leq c\mu ^{-1/2}\left\Vert \nabla u\right\Vert _{L^{2}(D_{1})},\] for some constant \(c\). Moreover \(\Phi \) satisfies \[\left\Vert \Phi -\frac{4\pi }{\mu }\chi _{ \mathcal{F}}\Phi \right\Vert _{W^{-1,2}(D_{1})}\leq c\mu ^{-1/2}\left\Vert \nabla u\right\Vert _{L^{2}(D_{1})}.\] Here \(\mathcal{F}=\{X\in D_{1}: \mathbf{n}(X)\in \mathcal{A}\}\). The proof relies on other results found in the paper and on the theory of regular points and a co-area formula proved by \textit{F. Bethuel} and \textit{ X.M. Zheng} [J. Funct. Anal. 80, No. 1, 60--75 (1988;Zbl 0657.46027)].