Global well-posedness, scattering and blow-up for the energy-critical focusing non-linear wave equation

Abstract

We study the energy-critical focusing non-linear wave equation, with data in the energy space, in dimensions 3, 4 and 5. We prove that for Cauchy data of energy smaller than the one of the static solution W which gives the best constant in the Sobolev embedding, the following alternative holds. If the initial data has smaller norm in the homogeneous Sobolev space H 1 than the one of W, then we have global well-posedness and scattering. If the norm is larger than the one of W, then we have break-down in finite time. © 2008 Institut Mittag-Leffler.