Liouville's theorem in calibrated geometries

TL;DR

This paper extends Liouville's theorem to calibrated geometries, showing that certain Sobolev mappings with calibration conditions are Möbius transformations, with implications for quasiregular curves and geometric rigidity.

Contribution

It establishes Liouville properties for calibrations in various dimensions, classifies when these properties hold, and demonstrates their density in the space of calibrations.

Findings

Calibrations in high dimensions have the Liouville property.

Liouville property is dense among calibrations.

Classification of calibrations with Liouville property based on geometric rigidity.

Abstract

We consider the following extension of the classical Liouville theorem: A calibration $\omega \in \Lambda^n \mathbb{R}^m$, where $3 \le n \le m$, has the Liouville property if a Sobolev mapping $F\colon \Omega \to \mathbb{R}^m$, where $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is a domain, in $W^{1,n}_{loc}( \Omega, \mathbb{R}^m )$ satisfying $\|DF\|^n = \star F^{*}\omega$ almost everywhere is a restriction of a M\"obius transformation $\mathbb{S}^m \to \mathbb{S}^m$. We show that, for $m\ge 5$, every calibration in $\Lambda^{m-2} \mathbb{R}^m$ has the Liouville property and, in low dimensions, a calibration $\omega \in \Lambda^n \mathbb{R}^m$ has the Liouville property for $3 \le n \le m \le 6$ unless $\omega$ is face equivalent to the Special Lagrangian. In these cases, the Liouville property stems from isoperimetric rigidity of these mappings together with a classification of calibrations whose conformally flat calibrated submanifolds are flat. We also show that, for $3 \leq n \leq m$, the calibrations with the Liouville property form a dense $G_\delta$ set in the space of calibrations. As an application, we consider factorization of more general quasiregular curves and stability of quasiregular curves of small distortion.