Stable blow up dynamics for the critical co-rotational wave maps and equivariant Yang-Mills problems (Q691687)

The authors study the evolution problem \(\partial_t^2u-\partial_r^2u-\frac{\partial _ru}{r}+k^2\frac{f(u)}{r^2}=0\) which gathers both the Wave Map problem for a map \(\Phi :\mathbb R^{2+1}\rightarrow\mathbb S^2\subset \mathbb R^3\) and the \((4+1)\)-dimensional Yang-Mills problem \(F_{\alpha\beta}=\partial_\alpha A_\beta -\partial_\beta A_\alpha +[A_\alpha ,A_\beta ]\), \(\partial_\beta F^{\alpha\beta}=[A_\beta ,F^{\alpha\beta}]\), where \(A_\alpha\) (resp. \(F_{\alpha \beta}\)) is the so(4)-valued gauge potential (resp. curvature). In the preceding problem, \(f=gg^\prime\) where \(g(u)=\sin (u)\) for the Wave Map problem (with \(k\in\mathbb N^\ast\)) and \(g(u)=\frac{1}{2}(1-u^2)\) for the Yang-Mills problem (with \(k=2\)). Initial data \(u\mid _{t=0}=u_0\) and \( \partial_tu\mid_{t=0}=v_0\) are imposed. The main result of the paper proves that for every \(k\geq 1\) there exists a set \(\mathcal{O}\) of initial data \((u_0,v_0)\) and a universal constant \(c_k>0\) such that the corresponding solution of the above evolution problem blows up in finite time. Moreover \(\mathcal{O}\) is proved to be an open subset of an affine Sobolev space and the authors describe in a precise way how the solution blows up and how its energy behaves. For the proof, the authors first build a family of self-similar solutions and they study their properties. They then decompose the solution using some of these self-similar profiles and they prove bounds using boot-strap arguments. The last step of the proof consists to derive the behaviour of the solution and of the corresponding energy mainly using a flux computation and studying a system of ode's.