Global and almost global existence for general quasilinear wave equations in two space dimensions (Q1726953)

For 2-D quasilinear wave equations of the form \(\square u=F(u,Du,D^2u)\), the author showed that the corresponding Cauchy problem admits a unique global classical solution with small initial data, if both the quadratic nonlinearity and the cubic nonlinearity satisfy the corresponding null conditions. The author also proved that the classical solution is almost global, i.e., the lifespan of solution \(T_{\varepsilon}\geq \exp({c}{\varepsilon^{-2}})\), where \(\varepsilon>0\) denotes the amplitude of the initial data and \(c\) is a positive constant, provided that the quadratic nonlinearity satisfies the null condition and \(\partial_{u}^{\beta}F(0,0,0)=0, \beta=3,4\). These results extend \textit{S. Alinhac}'s seminal work [Invent. Math. 145, No. 3, 597--618 (2001; Zbl 1112.35341)] to the general case in a unified way.