Harmonic maps in unfashionable geometries (Q697400)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss two classes of surfaces -- Lie minimal and projectively minimal surfaces. These surfaces are the analogues of Willmore surfaces in projective and Lie sphere geometry. The authors describe some general constructions on a real smooth projective 4-quadric which provide analogues of the Willmore functional \(W\) and conformal Gauss map in Lie sphere and projective differential geometry. Extrema of these functionals are characterized by harmonicity of this Gauss map. The authors arrive at a uniform approach by considering Legendre immersions into the space of lines in a 4-dimensional quadric \(\mathcal Q\). In this setting, with the aid of the focal surfaces and conjugate parameters attached to such an immersion, each Legendre immersion is equipped with a Grassmannian-valued Gauss map. The authors let the harmonic map energy of this Gauss map define a functional \(W\) on Legendre immersions. Clearly a Legendre immersion with harmonic Gauss map will extremize \(W\) but the converse is more delicate: the main technical contribution of the paper is a proposition which demonstrates that criticality of \(W\) with respect to Legendre variations suffices to ensure harmonicity of the Gauss map. These constructions proceed independently of the signature of the metric on \(\mathbb R^6\) defining \(\mathcal Q\) but specialize to give the main results once that signature is declared. Thus the methods may be viewed as a practical implementation of the famous line-sphere correspondence of Lie. Some applications of harmonic map theory to Lie and projectively minimal surfaces are indicated.