Harmonic sections of vector bundles with spherically symmetric metrics

Abstract We equip an arbitrary vector bundle over a Riemannian manifold, endowed with a fiber metric and a compatible connection, with a spherically symmetric metric (cf. [4]), and westudy harmonicity of its sections firstly as smooth maps and then as critical points of the energy functional with variations through smooth sections.We also characterize vertically harmonic sections. Finally, we give some examples of special vector bundles, recovering in some situations some classical harmonicity results.