Global dynamics of the nonradial energy-critical wave equation above the ground state energy

Joachim Krieger, Kenji Nakanishi, Wilhelm Schlag

Published 2011-12-23, updated 2013-03-04Version 2

In this paper we establish the existence of certain classes of solutions to the energy critical nonlinear wave equation in dimensions 3 and 5 assuming that the energy exceeds the ground state energy only by a small amount. No radial assumption is made. We find that there exist four sets in the natural energy space with nonempty interiors which correspond to all possible combinations of finite-time blowup on the one hand, and global existence and scattering to a free wave, on the other hand, as time approaches infinity. In our previous paper arxiv:1010.3799 we treated the radial case, and this paper provides the natural nonradial extension of these results. However, the present paper is self-contained and in fact develops a somewhat different formalism in order to handle the more complex nonradial situation.