On harmonic maps from the complex plane to hyperbolic 3-space (Q7008725)

A twisted ideal polygon in hyperbolic space \(\mathbb{H}^{3}\) is a cyclically ordered set of ideal points in \(\partial_{\infty}\mathbb{H}^{3}\) together with bi-infinite geodesics between successive points. A map from \(\mathbb{C}\) to \(\mathbb{H}^{3}\) is said to be asymptotic to a twisted ideal polygon \(P\) if for any diverging sequence \(x_{k}\) in \(\mathbb{C}\), their images under the map converge (after passing to a subsequence) to a point in \(P\). \N\NThe authors prove that given a twisted ideal polygon \(P\) in \(\mathbb{H}^{3}\) with \(n\geq 3\) ideal vertices, there exists a harmonic map from \(\mathbb{C}\) to \(\mathbb{H}^{3}\) asymptotic to that polygon, whose Hopf differential is a polynomial of degree \((n-2)\). Moreover, this map is unique if the principal part of \(q(z)\) is prescribed. One important feature of this harmonic map, which plays an important role in the proof, is that it is at bounded distance from a pleated plane asymptotic to \(P\).