Green-hyperbolic operators on globally hyperbolic spacetimes (Q2515026)

A geometric and analytic study is presented for the class of Green-hyperbolic differential operators, acting on spaces of sections of vector bundles \(E_i\) over a globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold \(M\). A Green-hyperbolic operator \(P: C^{\infty}(M,E_1)\to C^{\infty}(M,E_2)\) is a linear differential operator which has the property (as well its formally dual operator \(P^t\)) that its restriction to \(C^{\infty}_c(M,E_1)\) has inverse operators \(G_{\pm}: C^{\infty}_c(M,E_2)\to C^{\infty}(M,E_1)\), the advanced and retarded Green operator of \(P\), respectively, such that for any section \(f\) the support of \(G_{\pm}f\) lies in the casual future or past of the support of \(f\), respectively. Sections 1 and 2 are introductory. Recalled, the concepts of globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold \(M\), Cauchy temporal function, (strictly) future, past, temporally or spacially compact subsets, defining spaces of smooth sections with support of certain type of compactness contained in such type of sets, inducing notions of support systems \(\mathcal{A}\) of closed subsets, and of distributional sections with support contained in such support systems. In section 3 functorial properties of Green-hyperbolic operators are given, and examples are described, namely the wave operators, as the d'Alembert and the Klein-Gordon operators, and non wave operators as the Porca operator. Extensions of \(G_{\pm}\) to space of sections with various support, like (strictly) spatially, past, future, or temporally compact subsets of \(M\), are proved to be uniquely defined, and to be continuous. As a consequence of these uniqueness it is proved in Corollary 3.9 that the only solution \(f\in C^{\infty}(M,E_1)\) of \(Pf=0\) with past-compact or future-compact support is the trivial solution \(f=0\), and the solution of \(Pf=g\) for \(g\) with past-compact support (or future-compact support respectively) exists and is unique under the condition the support of \(f\) is in the casual future (or past resp.) of the support of \(g\). Other conclusions are that the advanced and retarded Green's operators are unique, and if \(P^2\) is Green hyperbolic, then so is \(P\). In particular Dirac-type operators are also Green hyperbolic. In Section 4 the author derives similar properties to the action of \(P\) on spaces of distributional sections, obtaining natural exact sequences. The last chapter is devoted to symmetric hyperbolic systems, that is a linear first order differential operator \(P:C^{\infty}(M,E)\to C^{\infty}(M,E)\) where \(E\) is a real or complex vector bundle over \(M\) with a nondegenerate definite or indefinite sesquilinear fiber metric, with symmetric or Hermitian principal symbol \(\sigma_P(\xi): E_x\to E_x\), for all \(\xi \in T_x^*M\), \(x\in M\), and such that \(\langle \sigma_P(\tau)\cdot,\cdot\rangle\) is positive definite for any future-directed timelike covector \(\tau\). Given a Cauchy temporal function \(t:M\to \mathbb{R}\), so that the Lorentz metric of \(M\) can be represented by \(g=-\beta dt^2+ g_t\) where \(g_s\) is the induced Riemannian metric on the Cauchy hypersurface \(\Sigma_s=t^{-1}(s)\), the author obtains an energy estimate in Theorem 5.3: For each \(x\in M\) and \(t_0\in t(M)\), there exist a constant \(C>0\) such that \[ \int_{\Sigma^{x}_{t_1}}|u|^2_0dA_{t_1} \leq \left[ C\int_{t_0}^{t_1}\int_{\Sigma^{x}_{s}} |Pu|_0^2dA_s ds + \int_{\Sigma^{x}_{t_0}}|u|^2_0dA_{t_0}\right] e^{C(t_1-t_0)} \] holds for any \(u\in C^{\infty}(M,E)\) and \(t_1\geq t_0\), where \(\langle \cdot, \cdot\rangle_0=\sqrt{\beta}\langle\sigma_P(dt)\cdot, \cdot\rangle\). If \(\Sigma \subset M\) is a spacelike Cauchy hypersurface, it is shown that given smooth sections \(f\) of \(E\) and \(u_0\) of \(E_{|\Sigma}\), the Cauchy problem \(Pu=f\) on \(M\), \(u=u_0\) on \(\Sigma\), is well posed, that is, it has a unique smooth solution \(u\in C^{\infty}(M,E)\), and the solution map \((f,u_0)\in C^{\infty}_c(M,E)\times C^{\infty}_c(\Sigma,E) \to u\in C^{\infty}_{sc}(M,E)\) is continuous. Uniqueness is proved using the energy estimate. Existence follows from usual PDE theory on coordinate charts. It follows, as a consequence, that a symmetric hyperbolic system \(P\) is Green hyperbolic.