On the critical regularity of nonlinearities for semilinear classical wave equations

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the Cauchy problem for semilinear classical wave equations \begin{equation*} u_{tt}-\Delta u=|u|^{p_S(n)}\mu(|u|) \end{equation*} with the Strauss exponent $p_S(n)$ and a modulus of continuity $\mu=\mu(\tau)$, which provides an additional regularity of nonlinearities in $u=0$ comparing with the power nonlinearity $|u|^{p_S(n)}$. We obtain a sharp condition on $\mu$ as a threshold between global (in time) existence of small data radial solutions by deriving polynomial-logarithmic type weighted $L^{\infty}_tL^{\infty}_r$ estimates, and blow-up of solutions in finite time even for small data by applying iteration methods with slicing procedure. These results imply the critical regularity of source nonlinearities for semilinear classical wave equations.