Well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for a class of hyperbolic operators with a stratified multiple variety: Necessary conditions (Q1384468)

It is in general a very hard problem to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem. A lot of papers about weakly hyperbolic equations of second-order show, that the condition of hyperbolicity is necessary but faraway from sufficiency. In a previous paper the first two authors studied the \(C^\infty\) well-posedness for a class of hyperbolic differential operators with characteristics of variable multiplicity of order at most three. Necessary conditions are expressed in a geometrical way, they are in general very technical. One assumption was that the localized polynomial at a triple characteristic point should be a strictly hyperbolic one on the conormal bundle of the triple manifold. In the present paper this assumption will be weakened. In a neighbourhood of a triple characteristic point the principal symbol an be factorized as a product of a linear form and a non-effectively hyperbolic quadratic form. The new assumptions containing as usual Levi conditions are near to sufficient ones. This fact makes the results very interesting and useful.