Threshold transition conjecture for cubic focusing nonlinear waves

Consider the focusing nonlinear wave equation P[ϕ]=0P[\phi]=0 with p=3p=3 in spatial dimension n5n\geq 5. Let (ϕ0,ω,ϕ1,ω)(\phi_{0,\omega},\phi_{1,\omega}), ω[0,1]\omega\in[0,1], be a one-parameter family of initial data imposed at t=1t=1. Threshold transition conjecture. There exists a smooth one-parameter family (ϕ0,ω,ϕ1,ω)(\phi_{0,\omega},\phi_{1,\omega}) and some ω(0,1)\omega^*\in(0,1) such that: (1) (ϕ0,0,ϕ1,0)=(0,0)(\phi_{0,0},\phi_{1,0})=(0,0), and for 0ω<ω0\leq\omega<\omega^* the corresponding solution exists globally in time to the past; (2) (ϕ0,1,ϕ1,1)(c3,α3c3)(\phi_{0,1},\phi_{1,1})\equiv(c_3,-\alpha_3c_3) in some sufficiently large ball, and for ω<ω1\omega^*<\omega\leq1 the corresponding solution blows up to the past, with some portion of the past boundary of its maximal domain of existence being a smooth spacelike hypersurface Σω\Sigma^-_{\omega} along which the solution exhibits ODE-type blow-up; (3) at ω=ω\omega=\omega^*, the past development blows up at (t,x)=(0,0)(t,x)=(0,0), and within the future light cone of this point the solution approaches the nontrivial self-similar solution as t0t\downarrow0, exhibiting locally naked singularity formation. This conjectures a threshold between the open small-data scattering regime and the large-data ODE-type blow-up regime, with the self-similar solution governing the transition.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Istvan Kadar and Warren Li, “Scattering and stability for ODE-type blow-up surfaces for focusing nonlinear wave equations”, arXiv:2602.02715 (2026).

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.