Global solutions for 1D cubic dispersive equations, Part III: the quasilinear Schr\"odinger flow

TL;DR

This paper establishes sharp local well-posedness and global existence results for 1D cubic quasilinear Schrödinger equations, confirming a conjecture that small, defocusing, phase-invariant initial data lead to global dispersive solutions.

Contribution

It proves the first global existence result for small data in 1D quasilinear Schrödinger flows under defocusing and phase rotation symmetry conditions.

Findings

Global scattering solutions for small, defocusing initial data.

Sharp local well-posedness at minimal Sobolev regularity.

Validation of the conjecture on long-time solutions for small data.

Abstract

The first target of this article is the local well-posedness question for 1D quasilinear Schr\"odinger equations with cubic nonlinearities. The study of this class of problems, in all dimensions, was initiated in pioneering work of Kenig-Ponce-Vega for localized initial data, and then continued by Marzuola-Metcalfe-Tataru for initial data in Sobolev spaces. Our objective here is to fully redevelop the study of this problem in the 1D case, and to prove a \emph{sharp local well-posedness} result. The second goal of this article is to consider the long time/global existence of solutions for the same problem. This is motivated by a broad conjecture formulated by the authors in earlier work, which reads as follows: ``\emph{Cubic defocusing dispersive one dimensional flows with small initial data have global dispersive solutions}''; the conjecture was initially proved for a well chosen semilinear model of Schr\"odinger type. Our work here establishes the above conjecture for 1D quasilinear Schr\"{o}dinger flows. Precisely, we show that if the problem has \emph{phase rotation symmetry} and is \emph{conservative and defocusing}, then small data in Sobolev spaces yields global, scattering solutions. This is the first result of this type for 1D quasilinear dispersive flows. Furthermore, we prove it at the minimal Sobolev regularity in our local well-posedness result. The defocusing condition is essential in our global result. Without it, the authors have conjectured that \emph{small, $\epsilon$ size data yields long time solutions on the $\epsilon^{-8}$ time-scale}. A third goal of this paper is to also prove this second conjecture for 1D quasilinear Schr\"{o}dinger flows.