Focusing of spherical nonlinear pulses for nonlinear wave equations (Q2508036)

The authors of this very interesting paper consider the system of two nonlinear wave equations in \(\mathbb R_{+}^{1+3}\equiv \{t>0,x\in \mathbb R^3\}\), \[ (\partial_t^2-\triangle )\phi^{\varepsilon }+a_1| \partial_t\phi^{\varepsilon }| ^{p_1-1}\partial_t\phi^{\varepsilon }+b_1| \partial_t\theta^{\varepsilon }| ^{q_1-1}\partial_t\theta^{\varepsilon }=0, \] \[ (\partial_t^2-4\triangle )\theta^{\varepsilon }+a_2| \partial_t\phi^{\varepsilon }| ^{p_2-1}\partial_t\phi^{\varepsilon }+b_2| \partial_t\theta^{\varepsilon }| ^{q_2-1}\partial_t\theta^{\varepsilon }=0, \] \[ \phi^{\varepsilon }| _{t=0}=\varepsilon U_0\biggl(r,\varepsilon ^{-1}(r-r_0)\biggr), \;\;\partial_t\phi^{\varepsilon }| _{t=0}=U_1\biggl(r,\varepsilon ^{-1}(r-r_0)\biggr), \] \[ \theta^{\varepsilon }| _{t=0}=\varepsilon V_0\biggl(r,\varepsilon ^{-1}(r-2r_0)\biggr), \;\;\partial_t\theta^{\varepsilon }| _{t=0}=V_1\biggl(r,\varepsilon ^{-1}(r-2r_0)\biggr), \] where the initial data is spherical symetric, \(a_i,b_i\) are constants, \(a_1\neq 0\), \(b_2\neq 0\), \(r=| x| \), \(x=(x_1,x_2,x_3)\in \mathbb R^3\), \(r_0>0\), \(1<p_1<2\), \(1<q_2<2\), \(p_2=(q_2+1)^{-1}q_{2}(p_1+1)\), \(q_1=(p_1+1)^{-1}p_{1}(q_2+1)\). The functions \(U_0,V_0,U_1,V_1\) are infinitely differentiable, bounded and there exists \(z_0>0\), \(a>0\) so that for all \(r\geq 0\), \(\operatorname{supp}U_j(r,\cdot )\subset [-z_0,z_0]\), \(\operatorname{supp}V_j(r,\cdot )\subset [-az_0,az_0]\) \((j=0,1)\). It is shown that away from the focal point, the solutions are described by nonlinear geometric optics. A global asymptotic description including an approximation which is a solution of the linear wave equations near the caustic is discussed.