Modulus of continuity of the coefficients and loss of derivatives in the strictly hyperbolic Cauchy problem

We deal with the Cauchy problem for a strictly hyperbolic second-order operator with non-regular coefficients in the time variable. It is well-known that the problem is well-posed in L2L2 in case of Lipschitz continuous coefficients and that the log-Lipschitz continuity is the natural threshold for the well-posedness in Sobolev spaces which, in this case, holds with a loss of derivatives. Here, we prove that any intermediate modulus of continuity between the Lipschitz and the log-Lipschitz one leads to an energy estimate with arbitrary small loss of derivatives. We also provide counterexamples to show that the following classification:modulusofcontinuity→lossofderivativesis sharpLipschitz→noloss,intermediate→arbitrarysmallloss,log-Lipschitz→finiteloss.