Blow up of solutions to the Cauchy problem for nonlinear wave equations (Q5943614)

The paper concerns the nonlinear wave equation \(\square u=|u_t|^p\) in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) with smooth compactly supported initial conditions \(u(0,x)= \varepsilon f(x)\), \(u_t(0,x)= \varepsilon g(x)\). It is shown that the solution always blows up if \((n-1)(p-1)\leq 2\), \(\varepsilon\neq 0\) and if \(f\) and \(g\) are not both identically zero. Moreover, if \(\int g(x) dx> 0\), the life span \(T(\varepsilon)\) is estimated as follows: There exist positive constants \(A\) and \(B\), independent of \(\varepsilon\), such that \[ T(\varepsilon)\leq \varepsilon A\exp \Biggl(- \frac{p-1} {1-(n-1)(p-1)/2} \Biggr), \quad\text{if }(n-1)(p-1)<1 \] and \[ T(\varepsilon)\leq \exp(B\varepsilon^{1-p}), \quad\text{if }(n-1)(p-1)=1. \]