Life-span of semilinear wave equations with scale-invariant damping: critical Strauss exponent case. (Q2315479)

In this paper, the authors investigated the blow up problem for the semilinear damped wave equations with both critical damping term and (expected) critical exponent, posed on \(\mathbb{R}^n\) with \(n\ge 2\), that is, \((\partial_t^2-\Delta+\mu /(1+t)\partial_t)u=|u|^p\), with \(\mu\ge 0\). The problem of determining the critical exponent has recently attracted much attention, and this paper serves as part of the many efforts of proving the blow up part. Heuristically, the solutions for wave equations are expected to be concentrated along the light cone and it naturally yields a shifted effect on the critical Strauss exponent, that is, \(p_S(n+\mu)\) be the positive root of \((n+\mu-1)p^2-(n+\mu+1)p-2=0\). However, it turns out that when the damping coefficient is large enough, the damping effect will be dominate so that the equation behaves like \((\partial_t^2-\Delta+\partial_t) u=|u|^p\), where the critical exponent is known to be the Fujita exponent \(p_F(n)=1+2/n\). In summary, it is conjectured that the critical exponent is \(\max(p_S(n+\mu),p_F(n))\), which is \(p_S(n+\mu)\) exactly when \(1<\mu\le\mu_*=\frac{n^2+n+2}{n+2}\). The main result of this paper under review states that, for compactly supported data of size \(\epsilon>0\), there are no global solutions for \(p=p_S(n+\mu)\) and \(1<\mu\le\mu_*\). Moreover, an expected upper bound of the life span is also given \(T(\epsilon)\leq\exp(C\epsilon^{-p(p-1)})\) for some \(C>0\). This result complements the authors' previous study [``A note on the blowup of scale invariant damping wave equation with sub-Strauss exponent'', preprint, arXiv:1709.00866 (2017)] on the sub-Strauss type exponent \(p<p_S(n+\mu)\). The same result has also been obtained in \textit{M. Ikeda} and \textit{M. Sobajima} [Math. Ann. 372, No. 3--4, 1017--1040 (2018; Zbl 1421.35220)], with different proof. The main idea of proof is to construct the suitable test function by introducing the modified Bessel function of second type.