Hyperbolic reduction

The notions of weak Darboux integrability and hyperbolic reduction are introduced, and their potential is gauged as a means of extending the range of application of geometric methods for solving hyperbolic partial differential equations. For directness, our work is expressed in local coordinates and formulated for semilinear hyperbolic systems in two independent variables. The theory is applied to the study of 1+1-wave maps into surfaces of revolution. It is shown that the differential system for any such wave map may be viewed as an integrable extension of a certain scalar, semilinear, hyperbolic partial differential equation which is explicitly constructed. Using this we discover a new integrable wave map system for which hyperbolic reduction leads to a large family of explicit wave maps.