In this paper, we prove the Lipschitz regularity of continuous harmonic maps from an finite dimensional Alexandrov space to a compact smooth Riemannian manifold. This solves a conjecture of F. H. Lin in [36]. The proof extends the argument of Huang-Wang [26].

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.

Let M be a complete Riemannian manifold with Riemannian volume volg and f be a smooth function on M. A sharp upper bound estimate on the first eigenvalue of symmetric diffusion operator 􏰂 f = 􏰂 − ∇ f · ∇ was given by Wu (J Math Anal Appl 361:10–18, 2010) and Wang (Ann Glob Anal Geom 37:393–402, 2010) under a condition that finite dimensional Bakry–Émery Ricci curvature is bounded below, independently. They propounded an open problem is whether there is some rigidity on the estimate. In this note, we will solve this problem to obtain a splitting type theorem, which generalizes Li–Wang’s result in (J Differ Geom 58:501–534, 2001, J Differ Geom 62:143–162, 2002). For the case that infinite dimensional Bakry–Emery Ricci curvature of M is bounded below, we donotexpectanyupperboundestimateonthefirsteigenvalueof􏰂f withoutanyadditional assumption (see the example in Sect. 2). In this case, we will give a sharp upper bound estimate on the first eigenvalue of􏰂f under the additional assuption that |∇f| is bounded.We also obtain the rigidity result on this estimate, as another Li–Wang type splitting theorem.

In this paper, we show the Yau’s gradient estimate for harmonic maps into a metric space (X, dX ) with curvature bounded above by a constant κ (κ 􏰣 0) in the sense of Alexandrov. As a direct application, it gives some Liouville theorems for such harmonic maps. This extends the works of Cheng (1980) and Choi (1982) to harmonic maps into singular spaces.

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