Blow-Up of Solutions of Some Nonlinear

Hyperbolic Equations”
TOSIO KATO
University of California,Berkeley

Dedicated to Fritz John on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, June 14, 1980

Abstract
We prove that any nontrivial solution of certain nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential
equations of second order blows up in a finite time if the initial data are localized, the initial
velocity being on the average non-negative.

In a recent paper [l], F. John considered the nonlinear wave equation

and proved, among other things, that every nontrivial solution u with
compactly supported initial data blows up in a finite time if

f ( t , x , s ) 2 b l s I P , where b>O, 1<~<1+2~”.

This condition on f is sharp since he proved also that if f = Is[” with

p > 1 + 2l’*, then the solution exists for all time for sufficiently small initial
data.
In what follows we shall give a partial generalization of the blow-up result
of John to arbitrary space dimension and t o more general equations. We
consider the equation

(El u,, + Au = Fu f( t, X, u ) , t20, XER”,

where A is an elliptic linear operator of the form

*This work was partially supported by NSF Grant MCS 79-02578. Reproduction in whole
or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.

Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. XXXIII, 501-505 (1980)

@ 1980 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 00 10-3640/80/0033-O501$0 1.OO
502 T. KATO

An essential property of A is that A * 1 = 0 , where A* denotes the formal

adjoint of A.
Our basic assumption on f is

(If n = 1, po may be any number greater than or equal to p.)

Condition (2) is not general enough to recover John's value p = p o <
I + 21'2 for a = 3, but it is rather general in other respect since p may be any
number larger than 1 and may be different from p o .
We shall not make any further assumptions on f or A explicitly, since we
are not interested in the existence problem here. Instead we introduce several
assumptions on the solution u considered. It is important that these assump-
tions are not absurd.
Our main result is given by the following

THEOREM.Assume (l),(2) for f . Let u be a generalized solution of (E) on

a time interval 0 5 t < T 5 m, which is supported on a forward cone

Moreover, assume that, for w ( t )= j R m u(t, x) dx,

(3) either (a) w,(O)>0, or (b) w,(O)= 0 and w(O)# 0 .

Then one must have T <00.

Remarks. (a) A generalized solution u of ( E ) on 0 5 t < T is supposed at
least to satisfy the following conditions:

(5) +
(d2/dtZ)(u,4) (u, A*4) = (Fu, 4) for every 4 E q ( R " ).
It appears necessary t o admit such generalized solutions u in the theorem, at
least for n 2 4 , since condition ( 1 ) for small Is1 might conflict with the
existence of classical solutions to (E).
(b) The condition that u be supported on KR would require that A is
uniformly elliptic and that f ( t , x, 0) = 0 .
 NONLINEAR HYPERBOLIC EQUATIONS 503

(c) The assumptions on u are not absurd, in the sense that with certain
additional assumptions (such as Lipschitz continuity of f ( t , x, s) in s), the
existence of solutions u of (E) satisfying these conditions can be proved at
least o n a finite time interval (see e.g., Reed [2]).
(d) It is interesting to compare ( 2 ) with the condition used by Fujita [3]
for positive solutions of the nonlinear heat equation u, - Au = Fu. Fujita's
blow-up condition roughly corresponds to (1) with 1< p 5 po < ( n + 2)/n, while
global solutions are shown to exist for small initial data if f ( s ) = sq with
q > ( n + 2)/n. The critical case q = ( n + 2 ) / n was recently shown by Weissler
[4] t o belong to the blow-up case.
Proof of the theorem: For the proof, we need an elementary lemma.

1. Let
LEMMA

Then there is a convex function g on R and a constant b, > O such that

(7) f k x, s) 2 g b ) 2 b, gob) 7 g(0) = 0 .

Proof: (1)-(2) imply that f Z bg,. Hence it suffices to find a convex
function g such that bg,, 2 g 2 b, go with some 6 , >0. This is trivial since go is
piecewise convex with a finite derivative.
To proceed with the proof of the theorem, we make for simplicity some
changes in notation. We shall normalize the Lebesgue measure dx so that the
unit ball has unit volume. Also we shift the origin of time t so that the cone
KR has the form 1x1 5 t and the initial time is at t = R. This will change T into
T + R, but we shall denote it again by T.
With these modifications, we have

To see this, we have only to apply ( 5 ) with a 4 2 0 such that 4 = 1 on BRzr

where R ' > R . (We denote by B, the closed ball in R" with center 0 and
radius r.) Then A * $ = 0 and 4 = 1 on the support of u(t, .) for t < R ' ,
yielding (8) for t < R' by (7).Since R' is arbitrary, we obtain (8) for all t > T.
Since g is convex and since the integral in ( g ( u ) ,1) may be taken on the
ball B,, which has volume t", we have
504 T. KATO

by (7). Here ( , ) s , denotes the scalar product in L2(B,). Thus (8) gives a
differential inequality for w :

(9) w,, Z b, t"inf { t - n p ~I~w I t-np Iwlp> 3 R%t<T.

We shall complete the proof by assuming that T = 00 in (9) and deducing a

contradiction.
To this end, we first note that w, is monotone nondecreasing because
w,, 2 0 , by (9). If w , ( R ) = a>O, it follows that w, 2 a for t r R and so
w 2 w ( R ) + a t > O for sufficiently large t. If w , ( R ) = O , then w ( R ) # O by
hypothesis, so that w,,(R)>O by (9) and w,(R + E ) > O for some E > O . If we
take R + E as the new initial time, we are in the same situation as above. In
any case, there is R 12 R, R I 2 1 , such that

(10) w,?a>O, w%at>O for rzR,zl,

possibly with a modified a > 0.
Now (2) implies that n - n p , , = - 1 - p , , and n - n p 2 - 1 - p . For t 2 R 1 2 1 ,
therefore, (9) yields
w,, 2 b,inf {t-'-"(l w p ~t-'-P w p >
3

= blt-l-pwPinf{(w/t)P~-D,
l}Zb,t-'-PwP,

- ~>
where b, = b , inf { U ~ C J 1) , 0, because w/t 2 a > 0 by (10) and po - p Z 0.
Thus the proof is reduced to proving the following lemma (again with some
change of notation).

LEMMA2. If p > 1, b>O, there is n o global solution to the differential

inequality

such that w , Z a > O a n d w Z a t > O .

Proof: We shall deduce a contradiction by assuming that w is a global
solution. Inequality ( 1 1) with w Z at implies that w,, 2 bap/t. Hence w, 2
K log t, eventually (i.e., for sufficiently large t ) , where K will denote different
positive constants in the sequel. Therefore,

(12) w 2 Kt log t, eventually .

Next we note that

 NONLINEAR HYPERBOLIC EQUATIONS 505

and thus

Since, by (121, w l t 2 K l o g t eventually, we may omit the last term -K for

large t, with the first K modified. Since

(13) gives

(14) w, 2 K(log t)cp-’”2(w/t), eventually

Since K(log t)‘P-1)12 is arbitrarily large for large t, the linear differential
inequality (14) for w implies

(15) w 2 Ktk, eventually,

for any positive number k.

Returning to (13), we then obtain

because we can choose k = 2 ( p + l ) / ( p - l ) in (15). Since (p+3)/4>1, (16) is a

nonlinear differential inequality in w for which no global solution with w > O
exists. This contradiction proves the lemma.

Acknowledgment. The writer is grateful to S. Klainerman for informative

discussions.

Bibliography
[l] John, F., Blow-up of solutions of nonlinear waue equations in three space dimensions,
Manuscripta Math. 28, 1979, pp. 235-268.
[2] Reed, M., Abstract Non-Linear Waoe Equations, Springer Lecture Notes in Mathematics 507.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1976, p. 507.
[3] Fujita, H., On some nonexistence and nonuniqueness theorems for nonlinear parabolic
equations, in Proceedings of the Symposium on Pure Mathematics, American Math. SOC.,
Providence, R.I.,1970, Vol. 18, Part 1, pp. 105-113.
[4] Weissler, F., Existence and nonexistence of global solutions for a semilinear heat equation,
preprint.

Received January, 1980.