Ill-posedness for one-dimensional wave maps at the critical regularity

Abstract

We show that the wave map equation in $\R^{1+1}$ is in general ill-posed in the critical space $\dot H^{1/2}$, and the Besov space $\dot B^{1/2,1}_2$. The problem is attributed to the bad behaviour of the one-dimensional bilinear expression $D^{-1}(f Dg)$ in these spaces.

10 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Amer. J. Math