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.

For a domain Ω of ${\mathbb C}^N$ we introduce a fairly general and intrinsic condition of weak q-pseudoconvexity, and prove, in Theorem 4, solvability of the $\bar \partial$-complex for forms with $C^\infty (\bar \Omega)$-coefficients in degree $\geq q+1$. All domains whose boundary have a constant number of negative Levi eigenvalues are easily recognized to fulfill our condition of q-pseudoconvexity; thus we regain the result of Michel (with a simplified proof). Our method deeply relies on the $L^2$-estimates by Hörmander (with some variants). The main point of our proof is that our estimates (both in weightened-$L^2$ and in Sobolev norms) are sufficiently accurate to permit us to exploit the technique by Dufresnoy for regularity up to the boundary.