Geometric renormalization of large energy wave maps

Tao, Terence

Journées équations aux dérivées partielles (2004), article no. 11, 32 p.

There has been much progress in recent years in understanding the existence problem for wave maps with small critical Sobolev norm (in particular for two-dimensional wave maps with small energy); a key aspect in that theory has been a renormalization procedure (either a geometric Coulomb gauge, or a microlocal gauge) which converts the nonlinear term into one closer to that of a semilinear wave equation. However, both of these renormalization procedures encounter difficulty if the energy of the solution is large. In this report we present a different renormalization, based on the harmonic map heat flow, which works for large energy wave maps from two dimensions to hyperbolic spaces. We also observe an intriguing estimate of “non-concentration” type, which asserts roughly speaking that if the energy of a wave map concentrates at a point, then it becomes asymptotically self-similar.

Classification : 35J10

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