Global existence and asymptotic behavior of classical solutions of quasilinear hyperbolic systems with linearly degenerate characteristic fields

In this paper, we study the global existence and the asymptotic behavior of classical solution of the Cauchy problem for quasilinear hyperbolic system with constant multiple and linearly degenerate characteristic fields. We prove that the global C-1 solution exists uniquely if the BV norm of the initial data is sufficiently small. Based on the existence result on the global classical solution, we show that, when the time t tends to the infinity, the solution approaches a combination of C-1 traveling wave solutions. Finally, we give an application to the equation for time-like extremal surfaces in the Minkowski space-time R1+n. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.