Harmonic maps to the circle with higher dimensional singular set

Abstract

In a closed, oriented ambient manifold $(M^n,g)$ we consider the problem of finding $\mathbb{S}^1$-valued harmonic maps with prescribed singular set. We show that the boundary of any oriented $(n-1)$-submanifold can be realised as the singular set of an $\mathbb{S}^1$-valued map, which is classically harmonic away from the singularity and distributionally harmonic across. If the singular set $\Gamma$ is also embedded and $C^{1,1}$, we consider three variational relaxations of the same problem and show that the energy of minimisers converges, after renormalisation, to the volume $\mathcal{H}^{n-2}(\Gamma)$ plus a lower-order "renormalised energy" -- common to all relaxations -- describing an energetic interaction between different components of the singular set.