Remarks on Propagation of Singularities in Thermoelasticity

Abstract

The propagation of high order weak singularities for the system of homogeneous thermoelasticity in one space variable is studied by using paralinearization and a new decoupling technique introduced by the author (Microlocal analysis in nonlinear thermoelasticity, to appear). For the linear system, one shows that the nonsmooth initial data for the parabolic part lead to singularities in the hyperbolic part of solutions, even when the initial data for that part are identically zero. Both the Cauchy problem and the problem inside of a domain for the semilinear system are considered. It is shown that the propagation of high order singularities is essentially dominated by the hyperbolic operator in the system of thermoelasticity.