Gevrey well-posedness for a class of weakly hyperbolic equations (Q1069042)

The author considers the Cauchy problem for a weakly hyperbolic equation of the type \[ (*)\quad u_{tt}=\sum_{i,j}(a_{ij}(x,t)u_{x_ i})_{x_ i}\quad on\quad {\mathbb{R}}^ n_ x\times [0,T]\quad (a_{ij}=a_{ji}) \] \[ u(0,x)=\phi (x),\quad u_ t(0,x)=\psi (x) \] (weak hyperbolicity means \(\sum a_{ij}(t,x) \xi_ i \xi_ j\geq 0\) for all \(\xi \in {\mathbb{R}}^ n)\) more precisely the well posedness of the C.P. in Gevrey classes. (By well posed C.P. in a class F of functions or functionals the author means the existence and unicity of the solution in \(C^ 1([0,T],F)\) for any initial data \(\phi\), \(\psi\) in F.) Then he proves the following nice result: Suppose that the coefficients of (*) (supposed weakly hyperbolic) satisfies: i) \((\exists)\sigma\geq 1\) such that on any compact \(K\subset {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) \(\xi \mapsto [\sum^{1,n}_{i,j}a_{ij}(t,x)\xi_ i \xi_ j]^{1/\sigma}\) is continuous from \(S^ n=\{\xi | | \xi | =1\}\) into \(BV([0,T],L^{\infty}(K));\) ii) \(a_{ij}\in \gamma^ s_{loc}\), where \(\gamma^ s_{loc}\) is the Gevrey class, with respect to x, uniformly with respect to t. Then the problem is well posed in \(\gamma^ s_{loc}\) provided that \(1\leq s<1+\sigma /2.\) The case \(s=1\) was previously studied by the author [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 7, 537-558 (1982; Zbl 0505.35051)] where condition (ii) alone is sufficient for obtaining the same conclusion. Although the C.P. is not well posed in general in \(\gamma^ s_{loc}\) for \(s\geq 2\) if there exist \(\sigma\geq 2\) such that (i) holds, then in this case the C.P. is well posed. The existence part is proved using a very ingenious method of ''approximated energies'', which works because of condition i), and a result of Olejnik giving a nice estimate for \((\sum_{i,j}\partial_{x_ k}a_{ij}v_{x_ ix_ j})^ 2\). The uniqueness part is classical. The author shows how with this method he can reobtain, and generalize, results of Nishitani, concerning equations with lower order terms.