Blow-up of the critical Sobolev norm for nonscattering radial solutions of supercritical wave equations on ${\mathbb{R}}^3$

Abstract

We consider the wave equation in space dimension $3$, with an energy-supercritical nonlinearity which can be either focusing or defocusing. For any radial solution of the equation, with positive maximal time of existence $T$, we prove that one of the following holds: (i) the norm of the solution in the critical Sobolev space goes to infinity as $t$ goes to $T$, or (ii) $T$ is infinite and the solution scatters to a linear solution forward in time. We use a variant of the channel of energy method, relying on a generalized $L^p$-energy which is almost conserved by the flow of the radial linear wave equation.