On the well-posedness of a quasi-linear Korteweg-de Vries equation

Abstract: The Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV) and various generalized, most often semi- linear versions have been studied for about 50 years. Here, the focus is made on a quasi-linear generalization of the KdV equation, which has a fairly general Hamil- tonian structure. This paper presents a local in time well-posedness result, that is existence and uniqueness of a solution and its continuity with respect to the initial data. The proof is based on the derivation of energy estimates, the major inter- est being the method used to get them. The goal is to make use of the structural properties of the equation, namely the skew-symmetry of the leading order term, and then to control subprincipal terms using suitable gauges as introduced by Lim & Ponce (SIAM J. Math. Anal., 2002) and developed later by Kenig, Ponce & Vega (Invent. Math., 2004) and S. Benzoni-Gavage, R. Danchin & S. Descombes (Electron. J. Diff. Eq., 2006). The existence of a solution is obtained as a limit from regularized parabolic problems. Uniqueness and continuity with respect to the initial data are proven using a Bona-Smith regularization technique.