Harmonic branched coverings and uniformization of CAT(k) spheres

DOI10.1515/CRELLE-2021-0031MaRDI QIDQ2238196zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Christine Breiner, Chikako Mese

Publication date 1 November 2021

Published in Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.12802

zbMATH Keywords

harmonic map Riemann surface sphere

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Differential geometric aspects of harmonic maps (53C43) Harmonic maps, etc. (58E20)

Abstract: Let

S

be a surface with a metric

d

satisfying an upper curvature bound in the sense of Alexandrov (i.e. via triangle comparison). We show that an almost conformal harmonic map from a surface into

(S, d)

is a branched covering. As a consequence, if

(S, d)

is homeomorphically equivalent to the 2-sphere

m a t h b b S^{2}

, then it is conformally equivalent to

m a t h b b S^{2}

.

Review text

In this article, the authors prove that if \(u:\Sigma\rightarrow (S,d)\) is a proper, non-degenerate harmonic map from a Riemann surface \(\Sigma\) to an oriented locally \(\mathrm{CAT}(k)\) surface \((S,d)\), then \(u\) is a branched cover, i.e., the map \(u\) is a covering map away from a discrete subset of the Riemann surface \(\Sigma\). If \(u\) is degree \(1\), then \(u\) is a homeomorphism. Applying this very interesting result, a uniformization theorem is deduced, namely if the \(\mathrm{CAT}(k)\) space \((S,d)\) is homeomorphic to a sphere, then it is conformally equivalent to the standard 2-sphere.

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