Harmonic maps of V-manifolds

Abstract

We generalize biharmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds into the case of the domain being V-manifolds. We obtain the first and second variations of bihar- monic maps on V-manifolds. Since a biharmonic map from a compact V-manifold into a Riemannian manifold of nonpositive curvature is harmonic, we construct a biharmonic non-harmonic map into a sphere. We also show that under certain condition the biharmonic property of f implies the harmonic property of f . We finally discuss the composition of biharmonic maps on V-manifolds.