A degenerate hyperbolic equation under Levi conditions

Abstract We consider the Cauchy problem for a second order equation of hyperbolic type. This equation degenerates in two different ways. On one hand, the coefficients have a bad behavior with respect to time: there is a blow-up phenomenon in the first time derivative of the principal part’s coefficients, that is the derivative vanishes at the time t=0. On the other hand, the equation is weakly hyperbolic and the multiplicity of the roots is not constant, but zeroes are of finite order. Here we overcome the blow-up problem and, moreover, the finitely degeneration of the Cauchy problem allows us to give an appropriate Levi condition on the lower order terms in order to get C^∞ well posedness of the Cauchy problem. Keywords: Cauchy problem, Hyperbolic equations, Levi conditions