Regularity for Dirac-harmonic maps into certain pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (Q785848)

Let \(M\) be a smooth and closed spin Riemannian surface, \(\Sigma M\) a spinor vector bundle over \(M\), and \((N^n, g_N)\) a pseudo-Reimannian \(n\)-manifold. Consider the space of smooth pairs \((\phi, \psi)\) defined by \[ \chi(M, N) = \{(\phi, \psi) : \phi \in C^\infty(M, N)\ \text{ and }\ \psi \in \Gamma(\Sigma M \otimes\phi^{-1}TN)\}, \] and the following Lagrangian over \(\chi(M, N)\), \[ {\mathcal L}(\phi, \psi) = \frac{1}{2}\int_M g_N(d\phi(e_\alpha), d\phi(e_\alpha)) + \frac{1}{2}\int_M \langle\psi, \not{D}\psi\rangle_{\Sigma M \otimes \phi^{-1}TN}, \] where \(\{e_\alpha\}\) is an orthonormal frame of \(M\), \(\langle\,\,,\,\,\rangle_{\Sigma M \otimes \phi^{-1}TN}\) denotes the inner product induced from those on \(\Sigma M\) and the pull-back bundle \(\phi^{-1}TN\), and \(\not{D}\) is the Dirac operator along the map \(\phi\). Critical points \((\phi, \psi) \in \chi(M, N)\) are called Dirac-harmonic maps from \(M\) to \(N\). Now, we embed \((N,,g_N)\) isometrically into some Euclidean space \((\mathbb{R}^K, g_0)\) and the admissible space of weakly Dirac-harmonic maps is defined by \begin{multline*} \chi^{w}(M, N) = \left\{(\phi, \psi)\in W^{1,2}(M,\mathbb{R}^{K}) \times W^{1, 4/3}(M, \Sigma M \otimes\mathbb{R}^K):\text{ for a.e. } x \in M, \right.\\ \left. \phi(x) \in N \text{ and for any } \nu \in T^\perp_{\phi(x)}N, \langle \nu, \psi\rangle_{\mathbb{R}^K} =0\right\} \end{multline*} A pair of fields \((\phi, \psi) \in \chi^{w}(M, N)\) is called a weakly Dirac-harmonic map from \(M\) to \(N\) if it is a critical point of the Lagrangian defined above on \(\chi^{w}(M, N)\). In this paper, the authors investigate the regularity of weakly Dirac-harmonic maps from a closed spin Riemann surface into a stationary Lorentzian manifold. A stationary Lorentzian manifold is a product manifold \({\mathcal N} = \mathbb{R} \times N^n\) equipped with a Lorentzian metric \(g = -\lambda(dt^2 + \vartheta)^2 + g_N\), where \(\lambda\) is a positive \(C^2\) function on \(N\), \(\vartheta\) is a \(C^2\) \(1\)-form on \(N\) and \(dt^2\) is the standard metric on \(\mathbb{R}\). In this case, the embedding of \(\mathcal N\) into some Euclidean space is \({\mathcal N} = \mathbb{R} \times N \hookrightarrow\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}^K \cong\mathbb{R}^{K+1}\). Suppose that \(M\) is a closed smooth spin Riemann surface, and \(\mathcal N=\mathbb{R}\times N\) is a \(C^3\) stationary Lorentzian manifold with a \(C^2\) metric given above. The authors prove that if \((\phi, \psi) \in \chi^w(M, \mathcal N)\) is a weakly Dirac-harmonic map, then \(\phi\) is Hölder continuous. If, in addition, \((\mathcal N, g)\) is a smooth pseudo-Riemannian manifold and \(\phi\) is continuous, then \((\phi, \psi)\) must be smooth. When the targets are spherical, a Jacobian structure for the weakly Dirac-harmonic maps was derived in [\textit{Q. Chen} et al., Math. Z. 251, No. 1, 61--84 (2005; Zbl 1091.53042)], and the regularity follows directly from Wente's lemma [\textit{H. C. Wente}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 26, 318--344 (1969; Zbl 0181.11501)] (cf. also [\textit{F. Hélein}, Harmonic maps, conservation laws and moving frames. Transl. from the French. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2002; Zbl 1010.58010)]). When the targets are compact hyper-surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^n\), it was observed in [\textit{M. Zhu}, Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 35, No. 4, 405--412 (2009; Zbl 1171.58005)] that the map part of a Dirac-harmonic map satisfies an elliptic system with an \(L^2\)-antisymmetric structure and hence the results in [\textit{T. Rivière}, Invent. Math. 168, No. 1, 1--22 (2007; Zbl 1128.58010)] and [\textit{T. Rivière} and \textit{M. Struwe}, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 61, No. 4, 451--463 (2008; Zbl 1144.58011)] can be applied to get the regularity for weakly Dirac-harmonic maps. The case of general compact Riemannian targets was handled independently in [\textit{Q. Chen} et al., J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 15, No. 3, 997--1031 (2013; Zbl 1271.81125)] and [\textit{C. Wang} and \textit{D. Xu}, Int. Math. Res. Not. 2009, No. 20, 3759--3792 (2009; Zbl 1182.58007)].