Global existence of small solutions to quadratic nonlinear wave equations in an exterior domain (Q1897277)

The author considers the initial boundary value problem for the nonlinear wave equation \[ \square u= (\partial_t u)^2,\;(t, x)\in \mathbb{R}^+\times B,\tag{\(*\)} \] \[ u(0, x)= \varepsilon_0 u_0(x),\;\partial_t u(0, x)= \varepsilon_0 u_1(x),\;x\in B,\;u(t, x)= 0,\;(t, x)\in \mathbb{R}^+\times \partial B, \] where \(\square= \partial^2_t- \Delta\), \(B= \{x: |x|= > R\}\), \(\partial B= \{x: |x|= R\}\), \(u_0\), \(u_1\) are real valued functions, \(\varepsilon_0\) is a sufficient small positive constant. In this paper, it is shown that small solutions to \((*)\) exist globally in time when \(n= 4\). His method in this paper is applicable to more general nonlinear wave equations such that \(\square u= F(\partial_t u, \partial_t \partial u, \partial^2_t u)\), where \(F\) is a quadratic nonlinearity in \((\partial_t u, \partial_t \partial u, \partial^2_t u)\), \(\partial= (\partial_1, \partial_2,\dots, \partial_n)\) and \(n\geq 4\).