Gevrey-well-posedness for weakly hyperbolic operators with non-regular coefficients. (Q1406905)

The authors consider the Cauchy problem for a second-order hyperbolic equation in the Gevrey class \(\gamma^s\) \[ \begin{gathered} u_{tt}(t, x)- \sum^n_{j,k=1} a_{jk}(t) \partial_{x_j}\partial_{x_k} u(t, x)= 0\quad \text{in }[0,T]\times \mathbb{R}^n,\\ u(0,x)= \phi(x),\quad u_t(0, x)= \psi(x).\end{gathered} \] They proved that if the coefficient \(a(t, \xi)= \sum a_{jk}(t) \xi_j\xi_k|\xi|^{- 2}\geq 0\) satisfies \[ |\partial_t a(t,\xi)|\leq A| t- t_0|^{-q} \] near \(t= t_0\), where \(A\) is a nonnegative constant, then the above Cauchy problem is \(\gamma^{(s)}\)-well-posed for \(1\leq q< 3\) and \(1\leq s< {3\over 2}\). Moreover, \(a(t,\xi)\) satisfies the above condition and \[ a(t,\xi)\leq B| t- t_0|^{-p}, \] near \(t= t_0\), where \(B\) is a nonnegative constant, then the Cauchy problem is \(\gamma^s\)-well-posed for \(q\geq 3\), \(0\leq p< 2\) and \(1\leq s< {q- 3p/2\over q-p-1}\). Furthermore, they show that the index \({q-3p/2\over q-p-1}\) is optimal.