Regularity of Minimizing p-Harmonic Maps Into Spheres and Sharp Kato Inequality

Abstract

Abstract We study regularity of minimizing $p$-harmonic maps $u \colon B^{3} \to \mathbb{S}^{3}$ for $p$ in the interval $[2,3]$. For a long time, regularity was known only for $p = 3$ (essentially due to Morrey [ 24]) and $p = 2$ (Schoen–Uhlenbeck [ 29]), but recently Gastel [ 7] extended the latter result to $p \in [2,2+\frac{2}{15}]$ using a version of Kato inequality. Here, we establish regularity for a small interval $p\in [2.961,3]$ by combining Morrey’s methods with Hardt and Lin’s Extension Theorem [ 11]. We also improve on the other result by obtaining regularity for $p \in [2,p_{0}]$ with $p_{0} = \frac{3+\sqrt{3}}{2} \approx 2.366$. In relation to this, we address a question posed by Gastel and prove a sharp Kato inequality for $p$-harmonic maps in two-dimensional domains, which is of independent interest.