Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

A distinctive feature of nonlinear evolution equations is the possibility of breakdown of solutions in finite time. This phenomenon, which is also called singularity formation or blowup, has both physical and mathematical significance, and, as a consequence, predicting blowup and understanding its nature is a central problem of the modern analysis of nonlinear PDEs.

In this talk we concentrate on wave maps – a geometric nonlinear wave equation – and we discuss the existence and stability of self-similar solutions, as in all higher dimensions they appear to drive the generic blowup behavior. We outline a novel framework for studying global-in-space stability of such solutions; we then men-tion some long-awaited results that we thereby obtained, and, finally, we discuss the new mathematical challenges that our approach generates.