Harmonic Maps Into Homogeneous Spaces
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Harmonic Maps Into Homogeneous Spaces
This book is concerned with harmonic maps into homogeneous spaces and focuses upon maps of Riemann surfaces into flag manifolds, to bring results of 'twistor methods' for symmetric spaces into a unified framework by using the theory of compact Lie groups and complex differential geometry.
Harmonic Maps Into Homogeneous Spaces
Harmonic maps and the related theory of minimal surfaces are variational problems of long standing in differential geometry. Many important advances have been made in understanding harmonic maps of Riemann surfaces into symmetric spaces. In particular, ""twistor methods"" construct some, and in certain cases all, such mappings from holomorphic data. These notes develop techniques applicable to more general homogeneous manifolds, in particular a very general twistor result is proved. When applied to flag manifolds, this wider viewpoint allows many of the previously unrelated twistor results for symmetric spaces to be brought into a unified framework. These methods also enable a classification of harmonic maps into full flag manifolds to be established, and new examples are constructed. The techniques used are mostly a blend of the theory of compact Lie groups and complex differential geometry. This book should be of interest to mathematicians with experience in differential geometry and to theoretical physicists.
Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations in Geometry and Physics
This volume presents the proceedings of a series of lectures hosted by the Math ematics Department of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, March 22-24, 1995, under the title "Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations in Geometry and Physics" . While the relevance of partial differential equations to problems in differen tial geometry has been recognized since the early days of the latter subject, the idea that differential equations of differential-geometric origin can be useful in the formulation of physical theories is a much more recent one. Perhaps the earliest emergence of systems of nonlinear partial differential equations having deep geo metric and physical importance were the Einstein equations of general relativity (1915). Several basic aspects of the initial value problem for the Einstein equa tions, such as existence, regularity and stability of solutions remain prime research areas today. eighty years after Einstein's work. An even more recent development is the realization that structures originally the context of models in theoretical physics may turn out to have introduced in important geometric or topological applications. Perhaps its emergence can be traced back to 1954, with the introduction of a non-abelian version of Maxwell's equations as a model in elementary-particle physics, by the physicists C.N. Yang and R. Mills. The rich geometric structure ofthe Yang-Mills equations was brought to the attention of mathematicians through work of M.F. Atiyah, :"J. Hitchin, I.