Well posedness under Levi conditions for a degenerate second order Cauchy problem (Q2462251)

This interesting paper is devoted to the qualitative theory of PDE of hyperbolic type. The author considers the problem \[ P(t,x,D_t,D_x)u(t,x)=0,\quad (t,x)\in [0,T]\times{\mathbb R}^n \] under the initial conditions \(u(0,x)=u_0(x)\) and \(\partial_t u(0,x)=u_1(x)\), where \(P\) is the second order differential operator \(P=D_t^2-a(t,x,D_x)+b(t,x,D_x)+c(t,x)\), where \(a(t,x,\xi)=\sum_{i,j=1}^{n}a_{ij}(t,x)\xi_i\xi_j\), \(b(t,x,\xi)=\sum_{j=1}^{n}b_{j}(t,x)\xi_j\), and \(D=(1/\sqrt{-1})\,\partial\). Assume that the operator \(P\) is defined in the sense that \(a(t,x, \xi )\geq 0\), \(t\in [0,T]\), \(x,\xi \in \mathbb R^n\). The equation under consideration degenerates in a weakly hyperbolic one and at the same time has coefficients that are non Lipschitz continuous in time. Intersections between the roots of the equation are of a finite order \(k\), and the first time derivatives of the coefficients of the principal part present a blow-up phenomenon at the time \(t=0\). The author proves that the mixture of these two situations gives, under an appropriate Levi condition, \(C^{\infty }\)- or Gevrey-well posedness of the above stated Cauchy problem. We remind that the problem under consideration is said to be well posed in some space \(X\) if and only if for the initial functions \(u_0, u_1\in X\) there exists a unique solution \(u\in C^1([0,T]; X)\).