Asymptotic control and stabilization of nonlinear oscillators with non-isolated equilibria (Q1598379)

Let \(\Phi\) be a real-valued function defined on a real Hilbert space \(H\) and let \(\gamma\) be a positive (damping) parameter. The paper is devoted to the asymptotic behavior of the trajectories of a damped nonlinear oscillator governed by the following equation in \(H\) \[ \ddot x(t)+ \gamma \dot x(t)+ \nabla\Phi(x(t))+\varepsilon(t) x(t)=0, \] where \(\varepsilon (t)\) is a scalar control function. For any control function \(\varepsilon (t)\), which tends to zero as \(t\) tends to infinity, the authors show that if \(\varepsilon (t)\) does not tend to zero too rapidly as \(t\) tends to infinity, then the term \(\varepsilon (t) x(t)\) asymptotically acts as a Tikhonov regularization, which forces the trajectories to converge to a particular equilibrium. Indeed, in the main result of this paper, it is established that, when \(\Phi\) is convex, under the key assumption, that \(\varepsilon (t)\) is a ``slow'' control, i.e., \(\int_0^\infty \varepsilon (t) dt = \infty\), and some other restrictions, then each trajectory of the considered system strongly converges to some equilibrium. As an application, the damped wave equation with Neumann boundary condition is considered .