Non-divergence harmonic maps

Abstract

We describe work on solutions of certain non-divergence type and therefore non-variational elliptic and parabolic systems on manifolds. These systems include Hermitian and affine harmonics which should become useful tools for studying Hermitian and affine manifolds, resp. A key point is that in addition to the standard condition of nonpositive image curvature that is well known and understood in the theory of ordinary harmonic maps (which arise from a variational problem), here we also need in addition a global topological condition to guarantee the existence of solutions.