Harmonic maps into Grassmannian manifolds

Abstract

A harmonic map from a Riemannian manifold into a Grassmannian manifold is characterized by a vector bundle, a space of sections of this bundle and a Laplace operator. We apply our main theorem, itself a generalization of a Theorem of Takahashi, to generalize the theory of do Carmo and Wallach and to describe the moduli space of harmonic maps satisfying the gauge and the Einstein-Hermitian conditions from a compact Rieannian manifold into a Grassmannian. As an application, several rigidity results are exihibited. In particular we generalize a rigidity theorem due to Calabi in the case of holomorphic isometric immersions of compact Kaehler manifolds into complex projective spaces. Finally, we also construct moduli spaces of holomorphic isometric embeddings of the complex projective line into complex quadrics of low degree.