Well-posedness in energy space for the periodic modified Benjamin-Ono equation (Q2441671)

This paper studies the defocusing generalized Benjamin-Ono equation, \(\partial_{t}u+\mathcal{H}\partial_{x}^{2}u=-u^{2}\partial_{x}u,\) on a periodic interval; here, \(\mathcal{H}\) is the Hilbert transform. A beneficial feature of this equation is that the \(H^{1/2}\) norm of the solution is controlled for all time. One difficulty in the present case is that because the domain is taken to be a periodic interval, no dispersive smoothing effect is expected, unlike the case of the domain being the real line. An analysis in Bourgain spaces is made after making a gauge transform, leading to a proof of global well-posedness in the energy space, \(H^{1/2}.\) The focusing problem is also studied; for this problem, the equation instead is \(\partial_{t}u+\mathcal{H}\partial_{x}^{2}u=u^{2}\partial_{x}u.\) In this case, the result of the authors is that the initial value problem is well-posed for a short time in the energy space, \(H^{1/2}.\)