A note on moving frames along Sobolev maps and the regularity of weakly harmonic maps
Abstract
The purpose of this note is twofold. First we show that, for weakly differentiable maps between Riemannian manifolds of any dimension, a smallness condition on a Morrey-norm of the gradient is sufficient to guarantee that the pulled-back tangent bundle is trivialised by a finite-energy frame over simply connected regions in the domain. This is achieved via new structure equations for a connection introduced by Rivière in the study of weakly harmonic maps, combined with Coulomb-frame methods and the Hardy-BMO duality of Fefferman-Stein. We also prove that for weakly harmonic maps from domains of any dimension into closed homogeneous targets, a smallness condition on the BMO seminorm of the map is sufficient to obtain full regularity.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Geometric Analysis and Curvature Flows
Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations
Advanced Differential Geometry Research
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society
- Volume
- 154
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1121–1132
- Publication date
- 14 January 2026
- Language
- EN