Low-Regularity Local Well-Posedness for the Elastic Wave System

Abstract: We study the elastic wave system in three spatial dimensions. For admissible harmonic elastic materials, we prove a desired low-regularity local well-posedness result for the corresponding elastic wave equations. For such materials, we can split the dynamics into the divergence-part and the curl-part, and each part satisfies a distinct coupled quasilinear wave system with respect to different acoustical metrics. Our main result is that the Sobolev norm $H^{3+}$ of the divergence-part (the faster-wave part) and the $H^{4+}$ of the curl-part (the slower-wave part) can be controlled in terms of initial data for short times. We note that the Sobolev norm assumption $H^{3+}$ is optimal for the divergence-part. This marks the first favorable low-regularity local well-posedness result for a wave system with multiple wave speeds.