A stochastic approach to the harmonic map heat flow on manifolds with time-dependent Riemannian metric

Abstract

We first prove stochastic representation formulae for space-time harmonic mappings defined on manifolds with evolving Riemannian metric. We then apply these formulae to derive Liouville type theorems under appropriate curvature conditions. Space-time harmonic mappings which are defined globally in time correspond to ancient solutions to the harmonic map heat flow. As corollaries, we establish triviality of such ancient solutions in a variety of different situations.