Qualitative analysis of fourth-order hyperbolic equations

We investigate the qualitative properties of weak solutions to the boundary value problems for fourth-order linear hyperbolic equations with constant coefficients in a plane bounded domain convex with respect to characteristics. Our main scope is to prove some analog of the maximum principle, solvability, uniqueness and regularity results for weak solutions of initial and boundary value problems in the space L 2 . The main novelty of this paper is to establish some analog of the maximum principle for fourth-order hyperbolic equations. This question is very important due to natural physical interpretation and helps to establish the qualitative properties for solutions (uniqueness and existence results for weak solutions). The challenge to prove the maximum principle for weak solutions remains more complicated and at that time becomes more interesting in the case of fourth-order hyperbolic equations, especially, in the case of non-classical boundary value problems with data of weak regularity. Unlike second-order equations, qualitative analysis of solutions to fourth-order equations is not a trivial problem, since not only a solution is involved in boundary or initial conditions, but also its high- order derivatives. Other difficulty concerns the concept of weak solution of the boundary value problems with L 2 – data. Such solutions do not have usual traces, thus, we have to use a special notion for traces to poss correctly the boundary value problems. This notion is traces associated with operator L or L -traces. We also derive an interesting interpretation (as periodicity of characteristic billiard or the John's mapping) of the Fredholm's property violation. Finally, we discuss some potential challenges in applying the results and proposed methods.