Decay of solutions to damped Korteweg-de Vries type equation (Q434369)

The paper deals with the initial value (IV) problem on \(I=\mathbb R\) and the initial boundary value (IBV) problem on \(I=\mathbb R_+\) for the damped Korteweg-de Vries type equation \[ u_t + bu_x + u_{xxx} + u u_x + a(x)u=0, \] where \(b\) is a real constant and \(a\in W^{1,\infty}(I )\) is a nonnegative function, which is responsible for the dissipative effect. It is supposed that the initial data \(u_0(x)=u(x,0)\) of both IV and IBV problems satisfy \(u_0(\cdot)\in H^1(I)\). The value \(\| u(\cdot,t)\|_{L^2(I)}\) is interpreted as the energy. It is proved that under the condition \(a(x)\geq \alpha_0>0\) for large enough \(|x|\), the energy for the IV problem decays exponentially as \(t > 0\) in the following sense: for any \(L>0\) the estimate is valid \(\| u(\cdot,t)\|_{L^2(\mathbb R)}\leq c(L)\exp\{- \omega(L) t\} \) when \(\|u_0(\cdot)\|_{L^2(\mathbb R)}\leq L\), with positive \(c(L)\) and \(\omega(L)\). A similar result is obtained in \(H^k\)-level, \(k\in \mathbb N\). The authors also study the energy decay for the IBV problem under a smallness condition on the initial data, but with a more general dissipative effect.