Scattering for critical radial Neumann waves outside a ball

Abstract

We show that the solutions of the three-dimensional critical defocusing nonlinear wave equation with Neumann boundary conditions outside a ball and radial initial data scatter. This is to our knowledge the first result of scattering for a nonlinear wave equation with Neumann boundary conditions. Our proof uses the scheme of concentration-compactness/rigidity introduced by Kenig and Merle, extending it to our setup, together with the so-called channels of energy method to rule out compact-flow solutions. We also obtain, for the focusing equation, the same exact scattering/blow-up dichotomy below the energy of the ground-state as in ${\mathbb{R}}^3$.