Indirect Boundary Stabilization of Weakly Coupled Hyperbolic Systems (Q4785646)

The paper studies the stabilization of the system of two coupled linear second-order equations: one with state \((u_1,u_1')\) and the other with state \((u_2,u_2')\), where \('\) means the differentiation in time \(t\). Let \(V_i\), \(i= 1,2\), and \(H\) be separable Hilbert spaces such that the injections \(V_i\subset H\) are dense, compact, and continuous, and the injection \(V_2\subset V_1\) is continuous. The abstract form of the system is described by \[ \begin{alignedat}{2} &u''_1+ A_1u_1+ Bu_1'+\alpha Pu_2= 0\quad &&\text{in }V_1',\;(u_1(0), u_1'(0))= (u^0_1, u^1_1),\\ & u''_2+ A_2u_2+\alpha P^* u_1= 0\quad &&\text{in }V_2',\;(u_2(0),u_2'(0))= (u^0_2, u^1_2),\end{alignedat} \] where \(A_i\), \(i= 1,2\), are coercive selfadjoint operators in \(H\); \(B\) is unbounded and symmetric in \(H\); \(P\) is bounded in \(H\), satisfying some restrictive assumptions; and \(\alpha\neq 0\) is a coupling constant. When there is no coupling, that is, \(\alpha= 0\), the equation for \(u_1\) is exponentially stable due to the presence of \(Bu_1'\), and the equation for \(u_2\) is conservative. The main result is the following: There is an \(\alpha_0> 0\) such that, as long as \(0<|\alpha|< \alpha_0\), the total energy for \((u_1,u_1', u_2,u_2')\) decays polynomially as \(t\to\infty\). The proof is based on an integral inequality for the nonincreasing energy function. The result is applied to several boundary control systems with coupling such as wave-wave equations, etc.