General decay of solutions of a viscoelastic equation (Q2480370)

The author considers the initial-boundary value problem \[ u_{tt}(x,t)-\triangle u(x,t)+ \int_0^t g(t-\tau)\triangle u(x,\tau) \,d\tau=0\quad \text{in} \;\Omega\times (0,\infty), \] \[ u(x,t)=0,\;x\in \partial\Omega,\;t\geq 0,\quad u(x,0)=u_0(x),\quad u_t(x,0)=u_1(x),\;x\in \Omega, \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain of \(\mathbb R^n\) \((n\geq 1)\) with a smooth boundary \(\partial\Omega\) and a nonincreasing function \(g:[0,\infty)\to (0,\infty).\) He shows that the solution energy decays at the rate of decay of the relaxation function, which is not necessarily decaying in a polynomial or exponential fashion. This result allows to use a larger class of relaxation functions in order to achieve the energy decay.