A sharp stability criterion for single well Duffing and Duffing-like equations (Q2280380)

In this paper, the author considers the dissipative Hill's equation \[ \ddot u+c\dot u+(b+a(t))u=0,\eqno(1) \] where \(b>0\), \(c>0\) and \(a\) is a time dependent coefficient. The main result is the following theorem. Theorem. Let \(J\subset \mathbb{R}\) be an open interval and assume that \(a := a(t) \in L^{\infty}(J)\) with \(0\le a(t)\le C\) in \(J\). Assume \(C < c \max\{c, 2\sqrt b\}\). Then there are \(\delta > 0\) and \(M \ge 1\) such that any solution \(u\in W^{2,\infty}\) of (1) in \(J\) satisfies \[ u^2(t)+u'^2(t)\le M[u^2(s)+u'^2(s)]\exp(-\delta(t-s)) \] whenever \(s\) and \(t\) are in \(J\) with \(s\le t\).