Scattering threshold for the focusing nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation

Abstract

We show scattering versus blow-up dichotomy below the ground state energy for the focusing nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation, in the spirit of Kenig and Merle for the $H^1$ critical wave and Schrödinger equations. Our result includes the $H^1$ critical case, where the threshold is given by the ground state for the massless equation, and the 2D square-exponential case, where the mass for the ground state may be modified, depending on the constant in the sharp Trudinger–Moser inequality. The main difficulty is the lack of scaling invariance in both the linear and the nonlinear terms.