Spatial homogeneity and invariant manifolds for damped hyperbolic equations (Q5956221)

The author studies the asymptotic behavior of the semilinear hyperbolic equation \[ u_{tt} + 2\alpha u_t = \nabla\cdot (a(x)\nabla u)+f(u) \] on a bounded domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n, (n\leq 3)\) with Neumann boundary conditions. The two main theorems state that for sufficiently large damping \(\alpha\) or diffusivity \(a\) the solutions of the hyperbolic equation converge in \(H^1\) to spatially homogeneous solutions, i.e. solutions of a corresponding ordinary differential equation. This in turn implies that the asymptotic behavior of the hyperbolic problem in the limit of large damping is the same as the asymptotic behavior of a related reaction-diffusion equation. The proofs are based on the construction of a one-dimensional attracting invariant manifold consisting of spatially homogeneous solutions. Due to asymptotic completeness all solutions must approach solutions on this invariant manifold. The approach can be extended to two-dimensional invariant manifolds in some cases as is demonstrated by an example. The paper is written very clearly and includes an appendix where an invariant manifold theorem is proved.