On Classical Global Solutions of Nonlinear Wave Equations with Large Data

Abstract

Abstract This article studies the Cauchy problem for systems of semi-linear wave equations on $\mathbb{R}^{3+1}$ with nonlinear terms satisfying the null conditions. We construct future global-in-time classical solutions with arbitrarily large initial energy. The choice of the large Cauchy initial data is inspired by Christodoulou's characteristic initial data in his work [2] on formation of black holes. The main innovation of the current work is that we discovered a relaxed energy ansatz which allows us to prove decay-in-time-estimate. Therefore, the new estimates can also be applied in studying the Cauchy problem for Einstein equations.