Decay estimates for fourth order wave equations (Q1381919)

The author considers semilinear fourth order wave equations of Klein-Gordon type (nonlinear beam equation). Strichartz type inequalities are proved for the linear equation which are applied to study the local existence and the asymptotic behavior of solutions to the nonlinear equation in case of power-like nonlinearities; also, low energy scattering is treated in the case of large exponents in the power law nonlinearity. The proofs of the Strichartz estimates use complex interpolation of analytic operator families, and a reduction type argument (due to the partial radial symmetry of the symbol of the linear part) for handling the quartic form associated with the appropriate Fourier transforms. The local well-posedness proof is quite involved due to the fact that for higher values of the power exponent the nonlinearity is no longer locally Lipschitzian. Here the decay estimates are used to prove local existence of solutions first in weaker spaces, and then establishing their regularity.