Let $(M,g)$ be a closed Riemannian $4$ -manifold and let E be a vector bundle over M with structure group G, where G is a compact Lie group. We consider a new higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functional, in which the Higgs field is a section of $\Omega ^0(\text {ad}E)$ . We show that, under suitable conditions, solutions to the gradient flow do not hit any finite time singularities. In the case that E is a line bundle, we are able to use a different blow-up procedure and obtain an improvement of the long-time result of Zhang [‘Gradient flows of higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals’, J. Aust. Math. Soc. 113 (2022), 257–287]. The proof relies on properties of the Green function, which is very different from the previous techniques.

In this paper, we define a family of functionals generalizing the Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals on a closed Riemannian manifold. Then we prove the short-time existence of the corresponding gradient flow by a gauge-fixing technique. The lack of a maximum principle for the higher order operator brings us a lot of inconvenience during the estimates for the Higgs field. We observe that the $L^2$ -bound of the Higgs field is enough for energy estimates in four dimensions and we show that, provided the order of derivatives appearing in the higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals is strictly greater than one, solutions to the gradient flow do not hit any finite-time singularities. As for the Yang–Mills–Higgs k-functional with Higgs self-interaction, we show that, provided $\dim (M)<2(k+1)$ , for every smooth initial data the associated gradient flow admits long-time existence. The proof depends on local $L^2$ -derivative estimates, energy estimates and blow-up analysis.

We consider the $p$-Yang-Mills functional $\left( p\,\ge \,2 \right)$ defined as $Y{{M}_{p}}(\nabla ):=\frac{1}{p}{{\int }_{M}}{{\left\| {{R}^{\nabla }} \right\|}^{p}}$. We call critical points of $Y{{M}_{p}}(\cdot )$ the p-Yang–Mills connections, and the associated curvature ${{R}^{\nabla }}$ the $p$-Yang-Mills fields. In this paper, we prove gap properties and instability theorems for $p$-Yang-Mills fields over submanifolds in ${{\mathbb{R}}^{n+k}}$ and ${{\mathbb{S}}^{n+k}}$.

In this paper, we consider Hermitian harmonic maps from Hermitian manifolds into convex balls. We prove that there exist no non-trivial Hermitian harmonic maps from closed Hermitian manifolds into convex balls, and we use the heat flow method to solve the Dirichlet problem for Hermitian harmonic maps when the domain is a compact Hermitian manifold with non-empty boundary.

In this paper, first, we will investigate the Dirichlet problem for one type of vortex equation, which generalizes the well-known Hermitian Einstein equation. Secondly, we will give existence results for solutions of these vortex equations over various complete noncompact Kähler manifolds.

Cet article de survol est le résumé de la conférence Coxeter-James de l'auteur, prononcée à la réunion d'hiver 1993 de la Société Mathématique du Canada.

La théorie de Morse décrit les liens entre la topologie d'une variété et la topologie des points critiques d'une fonction sur cette variété. La fonctionnelle d'énergie pour les applications d'une surface dans une variété, dont les points critiques seront des applications harmoniques et parfois holomorphes, et la fonctionnelle de Yang-Mills pour des connections sur une variété de dimension quatre sont deux cas en dimension infinie pour lesquels la théorie de Morse ne tient pas. Néanmois, dans les deux cas, on peut récupérer une quantité étonnante d'information, pourvu qu'on stabilise par rapport à un degré ou une charge qui sont des données du problème. Les preuves recyclent des résultats de la théorie de l'homotopie des années '70, et les combinent à des idées de géométrie complexe pour donner de jolis modèles des espaces en cause en termes de "particules". Nous espérons donner un survol général et accessible des idées utilisées.