Optimal indirect stability of a weakly damped elastic abstract system of second order equations coupled by velocities (Q2069905)

In this paper the authors consider the following system of second order evolution equations: \[ \begin{cases} u_{tt}+aAu+A^{\gamma}u_t+\alpha y_{t}=0,\\ y_{tt}+Ay-\alpha u_t=0, \end{cases} \] where \(a>0\), \(\gamma\leq 0\), \(\alpha \in \mathbb R^{*}\) and \(A\) is a self-adjoint coercive operator with a compact resolvent in a separable Hilbert space \(H\). It is proved that in the case when \(a=1\) and \(\gamma=0\), the above system is exponentially stable while in the cases when \(a=1\) and \(\gamma <0\) or \(a\neq 1\) and \(\gamma \leq 0\) it is polynomially stable. As an illustration of the main results the authors consider an exponential energy decay rate and a polynomial energy decay rate of the system of weakly coupled wave equations and the system of weakly coupled plate equations.