ar X iv : m at h / 04 11 51 3 v 2 [ m at h . A P ] 1 4 A pr 2 00 5 NONLINEAR HYPERBOLIC EQUATIONS IN INFINITE HOMOGENEOUS WAVEGUIDES

In this paper we prove global and almost global existence theorems for nonlinear wave equations with quadratic nonlinearities in infinite homogeneous waveguides. We can handle both the case of Dirichlet boundary conditions and Neu-mann boundary conditions. In the case of Neumann boundary conditions we need to assume a natural nonlinear Neumann condition on the quasilinear terms. The results that we obtain are sharp in terms of the assumptions on the dimensions for the global existence results and in terms of the lifespan for the almost global results. For nonlinear wave equations, in the case where the infinite part of the waveguide has spatial dimension three, the hypotheses in the theorem concern whether or not the Laplacian for the compact base of the waveguide has a zero mode or not.