Normal form smoothing and spatial analyticity for the dispersion-generalized periodic KdV equation

Abstract

This paper investigates the persistence of spatial analyticity for solutions to the dispersion-generalized periodic Korteweg-de Vries equation $$\partial_tu-\partial_x|D_x|^αu+u\partial_xu=0,\qquadα\ge2.$$ For real-valued initial data $u_0\in G^{σ_0,s}(\mathbb T)$, with $σ_0>0$ and $s\ge-α/4$, we prove that the corresponding global solution satisfies $$u\in C([-T,T];G^{σ(T),s}(\mathbb T)),\qquadσ(T)=\min\left\{σ_0,\frac cT\right\},$$ for every $T>0$. As a consequence, our result improves the lower bound for the radius of spatial analyticity established by Himonas, Kalisch, and Selberg (2017) for $2\leα<4$, including the classical periodic KdV equation, and establishes a unified $T^{-1}$ lower bound for the analyticity radius for every $α\ge2$. The main novelties are twofold. First, we introduce a normal form reduction at the level of the Gevrey energy, which reveals an additional cancellation in the cubic Gevrey commutator and separates it into a non-accumulating boundary correction and a quartic remainder. Second, we establish a global-in-time periodic $L_{t,x}^4$ estimate for the non-polynomial phase $k|k|^α$, valid for every real $α\ge2$. Together, these ingredients yield a refined almost conservation law and the $T^{-1}$ lower bound for the radius of spatial analyticity.