Global controllability to harmonic maps of the heat flow from a circle to a sphere

Abstract

In this paper, we study the controllability and stabilization problems of the harmonic map heat flow from a circle to a sphere. Combining ideas from control theory, heat flow, differential geometry, and asymptotic analysis, we obtain several important properties, such as small-time local controllability, local quantitative rapid stabilization, obstruction to semi-global asymptotic stabilization, and global controllability to geodesics. Surprisingly, due to the geometric feature of the equation we can also prove the small-time global controllability between harmonic maps within the same homotopy class for general compact Riemannian manifold targets, which is to be compared with the analogous but longstanding open problem for nonlinear heat equations.