A NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT CONDITION FOR GLOBAL EXISTENCE OF CLASSICAL SOLUTIONS TO CAUCHY PROBLEM OF QUASILINEAR HYPERBOLIC SYSTEMS IN DIAGONAL FORM

This article considers Cauchy problem for quasilinear hyperbolic systems in diagonal form. A necessary and sufficient condition in guaranteeing that Cauchy problem admits a unique global classical solution on t ≥ 0 is obtained, and a sharp estimate of the life span for the classical solution is given.