The propagation of polarization in double refraction (Q1187778)

The author defines the concept of system of equations of uniaxial type, which generalize Maxwell's system of equations for uniaxial crystals. A system of classical pseudodifferential operators on a manifold is of uniaxial type if the following conditions hold: the characteristic set is a union of two non-radial hypersurfaces, which are tangent of exactly order \(k_ 0 \geq 1\) at an involutive manifold, the Hamilton fields of the surfaces are parallel, and their Lie bracket vanishes of at least order \(k_ 0\) there, the principal symbol vanishes of first order on the two-dimensional kernel at the intersection and finally, a Levi type condition holds. The author studies the propagation of the polarization sets of the solutions. The polarization set is a more refined concept than the wave front set for vector-valued distributions. It indicates in which component the distribution is more singular. The author shows that the real polarizations, limits of polarizations from outside the intersection of the characteristics, are foliated by limit Hamilton orbits and prove the propagation of polarization in the limit Hamilton orbit case and in the non-tangential case.