Globality of the DPW construction for Smyth potentials in the case of SU1,1

Abstract

We construct harmonic maps into ${\mathrm{SU}}_{1,1}/U_1$ starting from Smyth potentials ξ, by the DPW method. In this method, harmonic maps are obtained from the Iwasawa factorization of a solution L of $L^{-1}dL=\xi$. However, the Iwasawa factorization in the case of a noncompact group is not always global. We show that L can be expressed in terms of Bessel functions and from the asymptotic expansion of Bessel functions we solve a Riemann-Hilbert problem to give a global Iwasawa factorization. In this way we give a more direct proof of the globality of our solution than in the work of Dorfmeister-Guest-Rossman [5], while avoiding the general isomonodromy theory used by Guest-Its-Lin [11], [12].