Global stability for a nonlinear system of anisotropic wave equations

Abstract

In this paper, we initiate the study of global stability for anisotropic systems of quasilinear wave equations. Equations of this kind arise naturally in the study of crystal optics, and they exhibit birefringence. We introduce a physical space strategy based on bilinear energy estimates that allows us to prove decay for the nonlinear problem. This uses decay for the homogeneous wave equation as a black box. The proof also requires us to interface this strategy with the vector field method and take advantage of the scaling vector field. A careful analysis of the spacetime geometry of the interaction between waves is necessary in the proof.