The focusing energy-critical nonlinear wave equation with random initial data

We consider the focusing energy-critical quintic nonlinear wave equation in three dimensional Euclidean space. It is known that this equation admits a one-parameter family of radial stationary solutions, called solitons, which can be viewed as a curve in $\dot H^s_x(\mathbb{R}^3) \times H^{s-1}_x(\mathbb{R}^3)$, for any $s > 1/2$. By randomizing radial initial data in $\dot H^s_x(\mathbb{R}^3) \times H^{s-1}_x(\mathbb{R}^3)$ for $s > 5/6$, which also satisfy a certain weighted Sobolev condition, we produce with high probability a family of radial perturbations of the soliton which give rise to global forward-in-time solutions of the focusing nonlinear wave equation that scatter after subtracting a dynamically modulated soliton. Our proof relies on a new randomization procedure using distorted Fourier projections associated to the linearized operator around a fixed soliton. To our knowledge, this is the first long-time random data existence result for a focusing wave or dispersive equation on Euclidean space outside the small data regime.