Existence of p-energy minimizers in homotopy classes and lifts of Newtonian maps

Global geometric and topological methods (à la Gromov); differential geometric analysis on metric spaces (53C23) Differential geometric aspects of harmonic maps (53C43) Harmonic maps, etc. (58E20)

Abstract: We study the notion of

p

-quasihomotopy in Newtonian classes of mappings and link it to questions concerning lifts of Newtonian maps, under the assumption that the target space is nonpositively curved. Using this connection we prove that every

p

-quasihomotopy class of Newtonian maps contains a minimizer of the

p

-energy if the target has hyperbolic fundamental group.

Review text

Two \(p\)-quasicontinuous maps \(u, v : X \to Y\) from a metric measure space \(X\) to a topological space \(Y\) are said to be \(p\)-quasihomotopic if there is a map \(h : X \times [0, 1] \to Y\) so that, given any \(\epsilon>0\), there exists an open set \(E \subset X\) with \(\mathrm{Cap}_p (E)< \epsilon\) such that \(h|_{X\setminus E \times [0,1]}\) is a classical (continuous) homotopy between \(u|_{X\setminus E}\) and \(v|_{X\setminus E}\). The domain \((X, d, \mu)\) is assumed to be a compact doubling \(p\)-Poincaré space, i.e., it is a metric measure space supporting a weak \((1, p)\)-Poincaré inequality, \(1 < p< \infty\). Now assuming \(Y\) is a connected, locally path connected Hausdorff space admitting a universal cover, consider the space \(C([0,1], Y)\) with the compact-open topology, and equivalence relation \(\sim\), where \(\alpha \sim \beta\) if \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) are endpoint preserving homotopic as paths. We set \({\widehat Y}_{\mathrm{diag}} = C([0,1], Y)/\sim\), called the diagonal cover of \(Y\). It is known that the map \(p: {\widehat Y}_{\mathrm{diag}} \to Y\times Y\) given by \(p([\gamma]) = (\gamma(0), \gamma(1))\) is a covering map and \(p_\sharp \pi ({\widehat Y}_{\mathrm{diag}}) = {\mathrm{diag}}(\pi(Y))\le \pi(Y) \times \pi(Y)\). With theses notions, we say that \(Y\) is path representable if the component maps of \(p: {\widehat Y}_{\mathrm{diag}} \to Y\times Y\) are homotopic as maps \({\widehat Y}_{\mathrm{diag}} \to Y\). In this paper, the author studies the notion of \(p\)-quasihomotopy in Newtonian classes of mappings, \(N^{1, p}(X, Y)\), and link it to questions concerning lifts of Newtonian maps, under the assumption that the target space \(Y\) is a nonpositively curved manifold. Recall that the Newtonian space \(N^{1, p}(X, Y)\) consists of equivalence classes of measurable mappings \(u : X \to Y\) for which there exists a \(p\)-integrable upper gradient \(g\). The space \(N^{1, p}(X, Y)\) equipped with the norm \(\Vert u\Vert_{1,p}^p = \Vert u\Vert^p_{L^p(X, Y)} + \inf_g \Vert g\Vert^p_{L^p(\mu)}\) is a Banach space. Given a covering map \(\phi: \widehat Y \to Y\) that is a local isometry, we say that a map \(u \in N^{1,p}(X, Y)\) admits a lift \(h \in N^{1,p}(X, \widehat Y)\) if \(\phi\circ h = u\) as maps in \(N^{1, p}(X, Y)\). Using this connections, the author proves that every \(p\)-quasihomotopy class of Newtonian maps contains a minimizer of the \(p\)-energy if the target \(Y\) has hyperbolic fundamental group.

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