Almost global existence for 4-dimensional quasilinear wave equations in exterior domains. (Q2343870)

This article focuses on almost global existence for quasilinear wave equations with small initial data in four-dimensional exterior domains. It was proved by \textit{L. Hörmander} [in: Microlocal analysis and nonlinear waves. New York: Springer. IMA Vol. Math. Appl. 30, 51--81 (1991; Zbl 0783.35036)] in the boundaryless setting by and \textit{Y. Du} et al. [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 33, No. 8, 1487--1506 (2008; Zbl 1209.35083)] for the star-shaped obstacle that the life span \(T_\varepsilon \geq \exp (c/\varepsilon)\), where \(\varepsilon >0\) denotes the size of the Cauchy data. By using the boundary term estimates of the second author and C. D. Sogge [\textit{J. Metcalfe} and \textit{C. D. Sogge}, Invent. Math. 159, No. 1, 75--117 (2005; Zbl 1077.35083)], the authors of the present paper obtain the same life span by only requiring that the obstacle allows for a sufficiently rapid decay of local energy for the linear homogeneous wave equation. For the star shaped obstacle, the estimate of Du et al. has been recently improved to \(T_\varepsilon \geq \exp (c/\varepsilon ^2)\) by \textit{D. Zha} and \textit{Y. Zhou}, see [J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 103, no. 3, 788--808 (2015; Zbl 1320.35230)].