Characteristics, bicharacteristics and geometric singularities of solutions of PDEs

DOI10.1142/S0219887814600391zbMATH Open1312.35008arXiv1311.3477MaRDI QIDQ2929946FDOQ2929946

Authors: Luca Vitagliano 

Publication date: 17 November 2014

Published in: International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Many physical systems are described by partial differential equations (PDEs). Determinism then requires the Cauchy problem to be well-posed. Even when the Cauchy problem is well-posed for generic Cauchy data, there may exist characteristic Cauchy data. Characteristics of PDEs play an important role both in Mathematics and in Physics. I will review the theory of characteristics and bicharacteristics of PDEs, with a special emphasis on intrinsic aspects, i.e., those aspects which are invariant under general changes of coordinates. After a basically analytic introduction, I will pass to a modern, geometric point of view, presenting characteristics within the jet space approach to PDEs. In particular, I will discuss the relationship between characteristics and singularities of solutions and observe that: "wave-fronts are characteristic surfaces and propagate along bicharacteristics". This remark may be understood as a mathematical formulation of the wave/particle duality in optics and/or quantum mechanics. The content of the paper reflects the three hour minicourse that I gave at the XXII International Fall Workshop on Geometry and Physics, September 2-5, 2013, Evora, Portugal.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.3477

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zbMATH Keywords

partial differential equationscharacteristicsHamilton-Jacobi theorybicharacteristicsjet spaceswave particle dualitygeometric singularities of solutions

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Wave front sets in context of PDEs (35A18) Singularity in context of PDEs (35A21) Geometric theory, characteristics, transformations in context of PDEs (35A30) Hamilton-Jacobi equations (35F21) Cauchy-Kovalevskaya theorems (35A10) Jets in global analysis (58A20)

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Cited In (9)

• A Geometric Framework to Compare PDEs and Classical Field Theories
• Remarks on non-maximal integral elements of the Cartan plane in jet spaces
• Meta-symplectic geometry of \(3^{\mathrm{rd}}\) order Monge-Ampère equations and their characteristics
• Bicharacteristics and Fourier integral operators in Kasner spacetime
• The moment map on the space of symplectic 3D Monge-Ampère equations
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• An introduction to completely exceptional second order scalar partial differential equations
• Contact manifolds, Lagrangian Grassmannians and PDEs
• Structural aspects of Hamilton-Jacobi theory

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