Let$C$and$C$′ be two smooth self-transverse immersions of$S$^{1}into ℝ^{2}. Both$C$and$C$′ subdivide the plane into a number of disks and one unbounded component. An isotopy of the plane which takes$C$to$C$′ induces a one-to-one correspondence between the disks of$C$and$C$′. An obvious necessary condition for there to exist an area-preserving isotopy of the plane taking$C$to$C$′ is that there exists an isotopy for which the area of every disk of$C$equals that of the corresponding disk of$C$′. In this paper we show that this is also a sufficient condition.
In this paper, we shall discuss the existence, uniqueness and regularity of harmonic maps from an Alexandrov space into a geodesic space with curvature 1 in the sense of Alexandrov.