Concentration of Laplace eigenfunctions and stabilization of weakly damped wave equation (Q303766)

Let \(M\) be a compact Riemannian manifold, and \(\Delta\) the Laplace-Beltrami operator on \(M\). The main result in this paper is a concentration estimate for the eigenfunctions of \(\Delta\). Let \(h>0\), let \(g \in C^{\infty}(M)\), and let \(\psi\) be a solution of \[ (h^2\Delta +1)\psi = g. \] Let \(\Sigma \subset M\) be a submanifold. For \(\beta>0\), let \(N_{\beta}\) be the set of points within distance \(\beta\) from \(\Sigma\). Then the paper's main result asserts that, for \(h\) small enough, there is a \(C>0\) such that for every \(\alpha \in (0,1)\), \[ \| \psi \|_{L^2(N_{\alpha h^{1/2}})} \leq C \chi(\alpha) (\|\psi\|_{L^2(M)} + \|g\|_{L^2(M)}/h), \] for an explicit function \(\chi\) depending on the dimensions of \(\Sigma\) and \(M\), usually a given power of \(\alpha\). This estimate is a bound on the rate at which \(\psi\) concentrates near \(\Sigma\). The main applications of this theorem given in this paper are to the weakly damped wave equation \[ (\partial_t^2 - \Delta + b\partial_t)u=0, \tag{\(*\)} \] for a function \(b \in L^{\infty}(M)\). For \(h>0\), consider the operator \[ L_h := -h^2\Delta -1-ihb. \] For \(\Sigma \subset M\) as above, and assuming certain growth behaviour of \(b\) in terms of the distance from \(\Sigma\), a consequence of the main result is an estimate for \(\|\varphi\|_{L^2(M)}\) in terms of a power of (small enough) \(h\) times \(\|L_h \varphi \|_{L^2(M)}\). This in turn implies an estimate for the `energy functional' \[ E(u(t)) = \int_M (\|\mathrm{grad}(u)\|^2 + |\partial_t u| )\, dm \] for solutions \(u\) of (\(*\)). This estimate has the form \[ E(u(t))^{1/2}\leq Ct^\nu (\|u|_{t=0}\|_{H^2} + \|(\partial_t u)|_{t=0}\|_{H^1}),\tag{\(**\)} \] for a power \(\nu\) depending on the growth behaviour of \(b\) away from \(\Sigma\), and where \(\|\cdot \|_{H^j}\) is the \(j\)th Sobolev norm. Another consequence of the main result is an estimate of the type (\(**\)) for local versions of the growth conditions on \(b\).