Continuous deformations of harmonic maps and their unitons
It is known that any harmonic map of finite uniton number from a Riemann surface into U (n) can be deformed into a new harmonic map with an associated S1-invariant extended solution. We study this deformation in detail using operator-theoretic methods. In particular, we show that the corresponding unitons are real analytic functions of the deformation parameter, and that the deformation is closely