A physical space approach to wave equation bilinear estimates (Q1809917)

In the study of nonlinear wave equations, it has been realized that bilinear estimates on free waves play a fundamental role. The goal of this note is to present physical space methods instead of the Fourier transform. The authors believe that their arguments can be useful for quasilinear wave equations with rough data, in which the Fourier transform is difficult to use directly. The alternative approach, which is presented here, relies on vector fields, energy estimates as well as taking localization, splitting into coarse and fine scales, and induction on scales.