Existence and stability of shrinkers for the harmonic map heat flow in higher dimensions

Abstract

We study singularity formation for the heat flow of harmonic maps from Rd\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\mathbb {R}^d$$\\end{document}. For each d≥4\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$d \\ge 4$$\\end{document}, we construct a compact, d-dimensional, rotationally symmetric target manifold that allows for the existence of a corotational self-similar shrinking solution (shortly shrinker) that represents a stable blowup mechanism for the corresponding Cauchy problem.