Quasi-regular solutions to a class of 3D degenerating hyperbolic equations

In the fifties M. Protter stated new three-dimensional (3D) boundary value problems (BVP) for mixed type equations of first kind. For hyperbolic-elliptic equations they are multidimensional analogue of the classical two-dimensional (2D) Morawetz-Guderley transonic problem. Up to now, in this case, not a single example of nontrivial solution to the new problem, neither a general existence result is known. The difficulties appear even for BVP in the hyperbolic part of the domain, that were formulated by Protter for weakly hyperbolic equations. In that case the Protter problems are 3D analogues of the plane Darboux or Cauchy-Goursat problems. It is interesting that in contrast to the planar problems the new 3D problems are strongly ill-posed. Some of the Protter problems for degenerating hyperbolic equation without lower order terms or even for the usual wave equation have infinite-dimensional kernels. Therefore there are infinitely many orthogonality conditions for classical solvability of their adjiont problems. So it is interesting to obtain results for uniqueness of solutions adding first order terms in the equation. In the present paper we do this and find conditions for coefficients under which we prove uniqueness of quasi-regular solutions to the Protter problems.