Blow-up of solutions to semilinear wave equations with variable coefficients and boundary (Q607321)

This paper gives estimates of the maximal time \(T(\varepsilon)\) of existence of solutions of equation \(u_{tt}-Lu=|u|^p\), where \(L\) is a uniformly elliptic operator with smooth coefficients, on an exterior domain satisfying a sphere condition, with Dirichlet boundary conditions, and compactly supported nonnegative initial data of the form \((\varepsilon f, \varepsilon g)\) with \(f\not\equiv 0\). The authors obtain blow-up (\(T(\varepsilon)<\infty\)) for \(n\geq 3\) and \(1<p<p_1(n)\), where \(p_1(n)\) is the usual critical exponent for the case \(L=\Delta\). Upper bounds for \(T(\varepsilon)\) are also given for equation \(u_{tt}-Lu=|u_t|^p\), with the same conditions as before except that \(n\geq 1\) and \(g\not\equiv 0\). The proofs are based on the method of differential inequalities applied to expressions of the form \(\int u(x,t)\varphi(x)\,dx\), where \(\varphi\) solves a suitable elliptic equation.