Distributional Solutions of the Damped Wave Equation

Abstract: This work presents results on solutions of the one-dimensional damped wave equation, also called telegrapher's equation, when the initial conditions are general distributions, not only functions. We make a complete deduction of its fundamental solutions, both for positive and negative times. To obtain them we use only self-similarity arguments and distributional calculus, making no use of Fourier or Laplace transforms. We next use these fundamental solutions to prove both the existence and the uniqueness of solutions to the distributional initial value problem. As applications we recover the semigroup property for initial data in classical function spaces and also the probability distribution function for a certain financial model of evolution of prices.