Magnetic unit vector fields

Abstract

We show that a unit vector field on an oriented Riemannian manifold is a critical point of the Landau Hall functional if and only if it is a critical point of the Dirichlet energy functional. Therefore, we provide a characterization for a unit vector field to be a magnetic map into its unit tangent sphere bundle. Then, we classify all magnetic left invariant unit vector fields on $3$-dimensional Lie groups.