Quantitative stratification and higher regularity for biharmonic maps

Abstract

In this paper we prove quantitative regularity results for stationary and minimizing extrinsic biharmonic maps. As an application, we determine sharp, dimension independent $L^p$ bounds for $\nabla^k f$ that do not require a small energy hypothesis. In particular, every minimizing biharmonic map is in $W^{4,p}$ for all $1\le p<5/4$. Further, for minimizing biharmonic maps from $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^5$, we determine a uniform bound on the number of singular points in a compact set. Finally, using dimension reduction arguments, we extend these results to minimizing and stationary biharmonic maps into special targets.