Near Soliton Evolution for Equivariant Schrodinger Maps in Two Spatial Dimensions

Book excerpt: The authors consider the Schrödinger Map equation in 2+1 dimensions, with values into \mathbb{S}^2. This admits a lowest energy steady state Q, namely the stereographic projection, which extends to a two dimensional family of steady states by scaling and rotation. The authors prove that Q is unstable in the energy space \dot H^1. However, in the process of proving this they also show that within the equivariant class Q is stable in a stronger topology X \subset \dot H^1.