Global existence and energy decay of small solutions to the Kirchhoff equation with linear dissipation localized near infinity (Q1970354)

This paper deals with the global solvability of the initial value problem \[ \begin{aligned} &w_{tt}- \sigma (||\nabla w(t)||^2) \Delta w+ b(x,t) w_t=0, \quad (x,t)\in {\mathbb{R}}^N \times (0, \infty) \\ &w(x,0)=f_1(x), \quad w_t(x,0)= f_2(x), \quad x \in {\mathbb{R}}^N,\end{aligned} \] where \(\sigma (s)\geq a_0 > 0\) is a \(C^1\)-function; \(b(x,t)\) is a nonnegative bounded \(C^1\)-function with bounded derivatives, such that \(b_t(x,t) \leq \beta (t)\) in \({\mathbb{R}}^N \times (0, \infty)\) with \(\beta \in L^1 ((0,\infty))\) a nonnegative function. \noindent The presence of the dissipative term \(b(x,t)w_t\) is effective only near infinity, because it assumed that \[ b(x,t) \geq b_0> 0\quad \text{provided}\quad |x|> R_0, \] with \(R_0> 0\). Using an argument based on weighted energy inequalities, the author proves the existence of a unique global solution \( w(\cdot,t)\in \bigcap_{j=0}^2 C^j ([0, \infty); H^{2-j})\) if the initial data are sufficiently small, namely \(||f_1||_{H^2}\leq \delta_0\) and \(||f_2||_{H^1}\leq \delta_0\). Besides, the author obtains decay estimates of the solution as \(t\rightarrow + \infty\).