English

Nonexistence for effectively damped waves with time-dependent mass

Analysis of PDEs 2026-08-02 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we study the semilinear wave equations uttΔu+b(t)ut+m2(t)u=up,t0,xRn u_{tt}-\Delta u+b(t)u_t+m^2(t)u=|u|^p, \quad t \geq 0, \quad x\in\mathbb{R}^n with effective time-dependent damping and a time-dependent mass dominated by the damping. D'Abbicco, Girardi and Reissig established global small-data existence in supercritical ranges and identified the scale pβ,η(n)=1+2ηn+2ηβ p_{\beta,\eta}(n)=1+\frac{2\eta}{n+2\eta\beta} for initial data in (Lη(Rn)H1(Rn))×(Lη(Rn)L2(Rn))(L^\eta(\mathbb R^n)\cap H^1(\mathbb R^n))\times(L^\eta(\mathbb R^n)\cap L^2(\mathbb R^n)) with 1η<21\leq\eta<2, where β\beta is the lower mass index associated with the damping-mass pair. To support the expected sharpness of this scale, they also established an analogous subcritical nonexistence result for the corresponding diffusion equation with nonnegative initial data in Lη(Rn)L^\eta(\mathbb{R}^n), leaving the wave-equation counterpart with effective damping and time-dependent mass open. We address this problem for η=1\eta=1 under an intrinsic accumulated-mass balance and a Liouville nonoscillation condition. By constructing a positive slow adjoint mode, we prove nonexistence of global weak solutions for 1<p<pβ,1(n)=1+2n+2β, 1<p<p_{\beta,1}(n)=1+\frac{2}{n+2\beta}, and also treat the critical case p=pβ,1(n)p=p_{\beta,1}(n) under an Osgood divergence condition. Conditional lifespan upper bounds and explicit admissible coefficient families are also given.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.00953,
  title  = {Nonexistence for effectively damped waves with time-dependent mass},
  author = {Duc An Phan and The Anh Cung and Trung Loc Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.00953},
  year   = {2026}
}