Global existence of smooth solutions to the initial-boundary value problem for the quasi-linear wave equation with a localized degenerate dissipation (Q1817984)

The paper deals with the initial-boundary value problem for the quasilinear wave equation \(u_{tt}-\text{div}(\sigma (|\nabla u|^2)\nabla u)+a(x)u_t=0\), \(t>0\), \(x\in \Omega ,\) satisfying sufficiently smooth data and the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions, where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\), and \(\sigma (v)\) is a positive function like \(1/\sqrt {1+v}.\) Combining the methods of his proceeding papers and using a special unique continuation theorem for a wave equation with variable coefficients, the author proves the global existence of smooth solutions to the above problem for a localized and degenerated dissipation term \(a(x)u_t.\) The power decay of solutions is also proved.