Caractéristiques des équations analogues à l'équation de Monge- Ampère. (Characteristics of equations analogous to the Monge-Ampère equation) (Q1819795)

The author studies a class of exterior differential systems which generalizes the Monge-Ampère equation. Given a symplectic 2n-manifold X with symplectic form F and an n-form \(\omega\), the differential system is the one generated by F and \(\omega\), i.e. he wants to find Lagrangian submanifolds S such that \(\omega\) restricted to S vanishes. He computes the set of integral elements, the Cartan characters and the set of regular integral elements. By applying the Cartan-Kähler theorem, he obtains the local solvability of the Cauchy problem given appropriate noncharacteristic real analytic initial data. This can be generalized to a \(C^{\infty}\) theorem under suitable hyperbolicity assumptions, by applying the modern theory of hyperbolic systems of PDE's. See, for example, the reviewer's monograph ''Involutive hyperbolic differential systems'', Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 370 (1987)]. The hyperbolicity condition is stated in terms of the characteristic variety (the set of singular integral elements), as computed by the author.