Quantitative characterization of traces of Sobolev maps

We give a quantitative characterization of traces on the boundary of Sobolev maps in $\dot{W}^{1,p}(\mathcal M, \mathcal N)$, where $\mathcal{M}$ and $\mathcal{N}$ are compact Riemannian manifolds, $\partial \mathcal{M} \neq \emptyset$: the Borel-measurable maps $u\colon \partial \mathcal M \to \mathcal{N}$ that are the trace of a map $U\in \dot{W}^{1,p}(\mathcal M, \mathcal{N})$ are characterized as the maps for which there exists an extension energy density $w \colon \partial \mathcal{M} \to [...