Propagation of singularities in Cauchy problems for quasilinear thermoelastic systems in three space variables (Q1433367)

The authors consider equations of thermoelasticity, that are equations that describe the elastic and the thermal behavior of elastic heat conductive media, in particular the reciprocal actions between the elastic stress and the temperature difference. The resulting systems of equations for the displacement vector and the temperature difference, are hyperbolic-parabolic coupled systems. The authors exploit paradifferential operators to decouple the hyperbolic-parabolic systems, to be then in a position to study the propagation of singularities for Cauchy problems of a quasilinear thermoelastic system in three space variables. They then obtain, by using classical bootstrap arguments, the property of finite propagation speeds of singularities and finally show that the microlocal weak singularities are propagated along the null bicharacteristics of the hyperbolic operators.