In this talk, I will present an approach to studying energy-minimizing surfaces in a singular setting, where we work with Sobolev maps valued in metric spaces. In particular, I will highlight key concepts and techniques that we use to establish new existence results. For instance, we show that, under suitable conditions, there exists a collection of harmonic spheres that generates the second homotopy group of the space. This generalizes the corresponding result of Sacks–Uhlenbeck from the smooth setting. This is joint work with Damaris Meier and Stefan Wenger.
Harmonic surfaces in non-smooth metric spaces
04.02.2026 11:30 - 13:00
Organiser:
T. Körber, A. Molchanova, F. Rupp
Location: