Krieger, JoachimOhlmann, Gaspard2021-09-212021-09-212021-09-21202110.5075/epfl-thesis-8378https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/181530We are interested in the well posedness of quasilinear partial differential equations of order two. Motivated by the study of the Einstein equation in relativity theory, there are a number of works dedicated to the local well-posedness issue for the quasilinear wave equation. We will focus on local well-posedness for the wave equation ; more precisely we are looking at the smallest Sobolev index such that the local well-posedness holds true for initial data in this space. In 2005, D. Tataru and Hart. F. Smith provided the current best upper bound for the smallest index in low dimension. In 1998, Hans Lindblad constructed a counter example for s=3 in dimension three, thus revealing the sharpness of Tataru and Smith's criteria in this dimension. Here, our goal is to obtain sharp counterexamples to local well-posedness for quasilinear wave equations of geometric character. First, we check how the construction by Lindblad translates to dimension two. Next, we shall try to see if a similar breakdown result applies to the vanishing mean curvature problem in Minkowski space. Finally, as a more long term goal, we may try to find explicit singular solutions of this problem, starting with smooth data, by following the constructions of Krieger-Schlag-Tataru.enWell PosednessQuasilinear wave equationfractional derivativeSobolev spaceslogarithmic Sobolev spacesthesis::doctoral thesis