We survey existence and regularity results for semi-linear wave equations. In particular, we review the recent regularity results for the u5-Klein Gordon equation by Grillakis and this author and give a self-contained, slightly simplified proof.

We introduce mountain-pass type arguments in the context of orbital instability for Klein-Gordon equations. Our aim is to illustrate on two examples how these arguments can be useful to simplify proofs and derive new results of orbital stability/instability. For a power-type nonlinearity, we prove that the ground states of the associated stationary equation are minimizers of the functional acti...