Smoothing estimates for non-dispersive equations (Q289837)

In the present paper the authors study smoothing estimates for solutions to the Cauchy problem \[ i\partial_t u + a(D_x)u=0,\quad u(0,x)=\varphi(x), \] where the equation is not necessarily supposed to be dispersive. The main goal of the paper is to generalize results from the dispersive case, that is, \(\nabla a(\xi) \neq 0\) for \(\xi \neq 0\) if \(a=a(\xi)\) is a real-valued homogeneous function, to the non-dispersive one. The global smoothing in the dispersive case was treated by the authors by using the methods of canonical transformations and comparison principles. Canonical transformations transform one equation to another one on the estimate level. Comparison principles relate differential estimates for solutions to different equations. The authors show that these methods can be applied to study the non-dispersive case, too. In a first step, the authors propose invariant estimates, these are invariant forms of global smoothing estimates which contain of course the known global smoothing estimates in the dispersive case. In Section 3, these ideas are applied in several cases as in the radial symmetric case (\(a(\xi)=f(|\xi|)\)) and in the polynomial case (\(a\) is a real polynomial) as well. Finally, such invariant estimates (smoothing estimates) are proved in two cases by conditions for the Hessian in non-dispersive points. On the one hand for positively homogeneous \(a=a(\xi)\) of order \(2\) (rank of Hessian is assumed to be \(\geq n-1\) in non-dispersive points), on the other hand for general operators \(a(D_x)\) with isolated critical points. Some generalizations to the time-dependent model \[ i\partial_t u + a(t, D_x)u=0,\quad u(0,x)=\varphi(x) \] complete the paper.