EXISTENCE OF HOMOTOPIC HARMONIC MAPS INTO METRIC SPACE OF NONPOSITIVE CURVATURE

The definitions and techniques, which deals with homotopic harmonic maps from a compact Riemannian manifold into a compact metric space, developed by N. J. Korevaar and R. M. Schoen [7] can be applied to more general situations. In this paper, we prove that for a complicated domain, possibly noncompact Riemannian manifold with infinitely generated fundamental group, the existence of homotopic harmonic maps can be proved if the initial map is simple in some sense.