Colombeau solutions to nonlinear wave equations

Abstract

This paper is a tutorial that demonstrates various methods from the Colombeau theory of generalized functions in the context of semilinear wave equations. The Colombeau generalized functions constitute differential algebras that contain the space of distributions. We solve the 1D-semilinear wave equation in these algebras, show how delta waves can be computed and then turn to linear and nonlinear regularity theory.