A degenerate hyperbolic equation under Levi conditions (Q2465912)

In the present study the author deals with the second-order equations of the form \[ \Biggl(D^2_t- \sum^n_{i,j=1} a_{ij}(t, x)D_{x_i} D_{x_j}+ \sum^n_{j=1} b_j(t, x)D_{x_j}+ C(t, x)\Biggr) u(t, x)= 0,\tag{1} \] where \(t\in [0,T]\), \(x\in\mathbb{R}^n\), \(D= {1\over i}\partial\), with \[ a(t,x,\xi):= \sum^n_{i,j=1} a_{ij}(t, x)\xi_i\xi_j\geq 0,\quad t\in [0,T],\;x,\xi\in\mathbb{R}^n. \] The author is mainly interested in \(C^\infty\) well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for (1). The equation (1) is allowed to be degenerate in two different ways: 1) there is a blow-up phenomenon in the first time derivative of the principal part's coefficients, 2) the equation is weakly hyperbolic and the multiplicity of the roots is not constant, but zeros are of finite order.