On finitely degenerate hyperbolic operators of second order (Q1769150)

The authors study weakly hyperbolic Cauchy problems of the type \[ \begin{gathered} \partial^2_t u- \sum^n_{i,j=1} a_{ij}(t) \partial^2_{x_ix_j}u+ \sum^n_{j=1} b_j(t, x)\partial_{x_j} u+ c(t,x)u= f(t, x),\\ u(0,x)= u_0(x),\quad u_t(0,x)= u_1(x)\end{gathered} \] under the assumptions \(a_{ij}\in C^\infty([0, T])\), \(b_j\), \(c\in C([0, T]; B^\infty(\mathbb{R}^n))\). The weakly hyperbolicity is characterized by the condition \[ a(t,\xi):= \sum^n_{i,j=1} a_{ij}(t) \xi_i\xi_j\geq 0,\;\xi\in\mathbb{R}^n,\;t\in [0,T]. \] To avoid very fast oscillations the authors suppose a condition which weakens the effective hyperbolicity to the finitely degenerate case and which reads as follows: \[ \sum^k_{j=0} |\partial^j_t a(t,\xi)|\neq 0,\;|\xi|= 1,\;t\in [0,T]. \] The influence of the lower order term \(\sum^n_{j=1} b_j(t, x)\partial_{x_j} u\) is controlled by the Levi condition \[ \Biggl|\partial^\alpha_x \sum^n_{j=1} b_j(t, x)\partial_{x_j} u\Biggr|\leq C_\alpha a(t,\xi)^\gamma |\xi|^{1-2\gamma} \] for any \(\alpha\) with \(\gamma= (k- 2)/(2(k- 1))\). Under all these assumptions the \(C^\infty\) well-posedness of the Cauchy problem is proved. It would be nice to fill the gap to the \(x\)-independent case, where \(C^\infty\) well-posedness was proved under the assumption \(\gamma= (k -1)/(2k)\).