Paper detail

Ill-posedness for the Maxwell-Dirac system below charge in space dimension three and lower

The Maxwell-Dirac system describes the interaction of an electron with its self-induced electromagnetic field. In space dimension $d=3$ the system is charge-critical, that is, $L^2$-critical for the spinor with respect to scaling, and local well-posedness is known almost down to the critical regularity. In the charge-subcritical dimensions $d=1,2$, global well-posedness is known in the charge class. Here we prove that these results are sharp (or almost sharp, if $d=3$), by demonstrating ill-posedness below the charge regularity. In fact, for $d \le 3$ we exhibit a spinor datum belonging to $H^s(\mathbb R^d)$ for $s<0$, and to $L^p(\mathbb R^d)$ for $1 \le p < 2$, but not to $L^2(\mathbb R^d)$, which does not admit any local solution that can be approximated by smooth solutions in a reasonable sense.