Gradient estimate and Liouville theorems for p-harmonic maps

Abstract

In this paper, we first obtain an $L^q$ gradient estimate for $p$-harmonic maps, by assuming the target manifold supporting a certain function, whose gradient and Hessian satisfy some analysis conditions. From this $L^q$ gradient estimate, we get a corresponding Liouville type result for $p$-harmonic maps. Secondly, using these general results, we give various geometric applications to $p$-harmonic maps from complete manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature to manifolds with various upper bound on sectional curvature, under appropriate controlled images.

16 pages