Wave equations associated to Liouville systems and constant mean curvature equations (Q1941148)

The authors study two types of wave equations, whose elliptic parts exhibit conformal invariance in \({\mathbb{R}}^2\). In the first part, the authors study the wave equation \[ \partial_t^2 u - \Delta_g u = \alpha \left(\frac{e^{2u}}{\int\!\!\!\!\!-_{{\mathbb{S}}^2}} - 1 \right) \] on \({\mathbb{S}}^2\), where \(\Delta_g\) denotes the (negative semidefinite) Laplace operator with respect to the standard round metric \(g\) on \({\mathbb{S}}^2\), \(\int\!\!\!\!\!-_{{\mathbb{S}}^2}\) is a shorthand for the average \(\frac{1}{4 \pi} \int_{{\mathbb{S}}^2} dvol_{g}\) with respect to the standard surface measure, and \(\alpha\) is some real constant. The authors show that the global existence in time for the sub-critical equation with data in \({\dot{H}}^1({\mathbb{S}}^2) \times L^2 ({\mathbb{S}}^2)\). For the super-critical and the critical equation the authors show the global existence in time assuming the data is symmetric with respect to antipodal on \({\mathbb{S}}^2\). For general data without symmetry assumptions and the critical equation, the authors establish that is there is a blow-up, then it will occur at a single point of \({\mathbb{S}}^2\). In the second part, the authors study the wave analog of the constant mean curvature equation in the Plateau formalism. They establish finite time blow up if the energy of the initial data is larger that \(8 \pi\) and with an additional subsidiary assumption.