The Solvability and Subellipticity of Systems of Pseudodifferential Operators

Nils Dencker

Published 2008-05-24, updated 2008-12-28Version 3

The paper studies the local solvability and subellipticity for square systems of principal type. These are the systems for which the principal symbol vanishes of first order on its kernel. For systems of principal type having constant characteristics, local solvability is equivalent to condition (PSI) on the eigenvalues, see arXiv:0801.4043. This is a condition on the sign changes of the imaginary part of the eigenvalue along the oriented bicharacteristics of the real part. In the generic case when the principal symbol does not have constant characteristics, condition (PSI) is not sufficient, not invariant and in general not well defined. Instead we study systems which are quasi-symmetrizable, these systems have natural invariance properties and are of principal type. We prove that quasi-symmetrizable systems are locally solvable. We also study the subellipticity of quasi-symmetrizable systems in the case when principal symbol vanishes of finite order along the bicharacteristics. In order to prove subellipticity, we assume that the principal symbol has the approximation property, which implies that there are no transversal bicharacteristics.