Global asymptotics of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the damped wave equation with absorption (Q2496819)

It has been investigated that solutions of the Cauchy problem for some linear or semilinear damped wave equations are expected to approach the solutions of the corresponding heat equations as \(t\rightarrow \infty\). A lot of remarkable results have been obtained by many reserchers including the authors. The authors treat the following Cauchy problem for the semilinear damped wave equation with absorption: \[ \begin{cases} u_{tt}-\triangle u +u_{t}+| u| ^{\rho-1}u=0,\;(t,x)\in {\mathbb R}_{+}\times {\mathbb R}^{N}, \\ (u, u_{t})(0,x)= (u_{0}, u_{1})(x),\;x\in {\mathbb R}^{N}.\end{cases}\tag{1} \] Let \(\rho_{c}(N)=1+\frac{2}{N}\), which is called critical exponent. In section 2 they treat mainly the subcritical case, \(1<\rho<\rho_{c}(N)\), for (1). But the result is stated beyond the subcritical case, i.e. \(\rho_{c}(N)\leq \rho<1+min(\frac{4}{N},\frac{2}{N-2})\). Then the semilinear term plays a role as an essentially nonlinear term. The similarity of the solution \(u\) of (1) to the solution of the corresponding semilinear heat equation is not shown. The decaying order of some norms of \(u\) has been proved (see Theorem 2.1 and Corollary 2.1). They prove the results by modifying the weighted energy method by Todoronova and Yordanov. In section 3 \(\rho_{c}(N)<\rho\) (super critical case) and \(N=1,2,3\) are assumed. In this case the role of the semilinear term is light and its effect looks to be negligible. Let \(G(t,x)\) be the Gauss kernel. Then the following is proved \[ \| u(t,\cdot)-\theta_{0}G(t,\cdot)\| _{L^{p}}={o}(t^{-\frac{N}{2}(1-\frac{1}{p})}),\;1\leq p\leq \infty ,\tag{2} \] where \[ \theta_{0}=\int _{{\mathbb R}^{N}}(u_{0}+u_{1})dx-\int_{0}^{\infty}\!\!\int _{{\mathbb R}^{N}}| u| ^{\rho-1}u(t,x)\,dx\,dt, \] and \[ \rho_{c}(N)<\rho \leq 1+\frac{4}{N}\;(N=1,2),\quad \rho_{c}(N)<\rho \leq 1+\frac{3}{N}\;(N=3). \] The main results are put in Theorem 3.1 and Corollary 3.1. The proof also depends on the weighted energy method by Todoronova and Yordanov and on the explicit formula of solutions to the linear damped wave equation. The second author has improved the result for the super critical case and proved (2) for \(N=3,4\) [see J. Math. Soc. Japan 58, 805--836 (2006; Zbl 1110.35047)].