The Lavrentiev gap phenomenon for harmonic maps into spheres holds on a dense set of zero degree boundary data

Abstract: We prove that for each positive integer

N

the set of smooth, zero degree maps

p s i c o l o n m a t h b b S^{2} o m a t h b b S^{2}

which have the following three properties: (1) there is a unique minimizing harmonic map

u c o l o n m a t h b b B^{3} o m a t h b b S^{2}

which agrees with

p s i

on the boundary of the unit ball; (2) this map

u

has at least

N

singular points in

m a t h b b B^{3}

; (3) the Lavrentiev gap phenomenon holds for

p s i

, i.e., the infimum of the Dirichlet energies

E (w)

of all smooth extensions

w c o l o n m a t h b b B^{3} o m a t h b b S^{2}

of

p s i

is strictly larger than the Dirichlet energy

i n t_{m a t h b b B^{3}} | a b l a u |^{2}

of the (irregular) minimizer

u

, is dense in the set of all smooth zero degree maps

p h i c o l o n m a t h b b S^{2} o m a t h b b S^{2}

endowed with the

W^{1, p}

-topology, where

1 l e p < 2

. This result is sharp: it fails in the

W^{1, 2}

topology on the set of all smooth boundary data.

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