ON THE CAUCHY PROBLEM FOR NONEFFECTIVELY HYPERBOLIC OPERATORS: THE GEVREY 3 WELLPOSEDNESS

For hyperbolic differential operators P with double characteristics we study the relations between the maximal Gevrey index for the strong Gevrey well-posedness and the Hamilton map and flow of the associated principal symbol p. If the Hamilton map admits a Jordan block of size 4 on the double characteristic manifold denoted by Σ and by assuming that the Hamilton flow does not approach Σ tangentially, we proved earlier that the Cauchy problem for P is well-posed in the Gevrey class 1 ≤ s < 4 for any lower order term. In the present paper, we remove this restriction on the Hamilton flow and establish that the Cauchy problem for P is well-posed in the Gevrey class 1 ≤ s < 3 for any lower order term and we check that the Gevrey index 3 is optimal. Combining this with results already proved for the other cases, we conclude that the Hamilton map and flow completely characterizes the threshold for the strong Gevrey well-posedness and vice versa.