A remark on the quasi-harmonic spheres (Q698375)

Quasi-harmonic spheres are one of the possible obstacles to regularity of the harmonic map heat flow. They can arise as the blow-up limit of parabolic rescalings of the flow around a singularity of first kind. Quasi-harmonic spheres are nonconstant maps from \(\mathbb{R}^n\) to some Riemannian manifold \(N\) which satisfy the Euler-Lagrange equation for the quasi-energy \(E_q(u):=\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}|Du|^2e^{-|x|^2/4} dx\). Roughly speaking, a quasi-harmonic sphere represents a singularity of the harmonic map heat flow if and only if it has finite quasi-energy. This is the motivation for the paper under consideration. It is proved that if \(n\geq 3\) and \(u\) is a \(C^2\) quasi-harmonic sphere for which \(\lim_{|x|\to\infty}u(x)\) exists, then \(u\) has finite quasi-energy. It is not known whether such examples exist. It is also remarked that there are (trivial) examples of quasi-harmonic spheres with infinite quasi-energy, which does not have any obvious consequences for the harmonic map heat flow. (On the other hand, there are examples by \textit{Huijun Fan} [Sci. China, Ser. A 42, No. 2, 113-132 (1999; Zbl 0926.35021)] of quasi-harmonic spheres with finite quasi-energy).