Generic non-uniqueness of minimizing harmonic maps from a ball to a sphere

In this note, we study non-uniqueness for minimizing harmonic maps from B 3 to § 2 . We show that every boundary map can be modified to a boundary map that admits multiple minimizers of the Dirichlet energy by a small W 1,p -change for p<2. This strengthens a remark by the second-named author and Strzelecki. The main novel ingredient is a homotopy construction, which is the answer to an easier variant of a challenging question regarding the existence of a norm control for homotopies between W 1,p maps.