Characterization of domains of fractional powers of certain operators arising in elastic systems, and applications (Q754046)

Properties of fractional order operators were discussed in the language of functional analysis by T. Kato in the 1950-55. The problems related to a specific decomposition of the elasticity, plate or beam operators were studied by A. V. Balakrishnan, D. L. Russell and the second author. The present authors look at the abstract problem \(\ddot x+B\dot x+Ax=0,\) where x is a vector in a Hilbert space H, A is the elastic operator, B a damping operator, A, B are dense in H, A is selfadjoint, positive definite. The operators \[ {\mathcal A}_ B=\left[ \begin{matrix} 0\\ -A\end{matrix} \begin{matrix} I\\ -B\end{matrix} \right],\quad A_{\rho \alpha}=\left[ \begin{matrix} 0\\ -A\end{matrix} \begin{matrix} I\\ -\rho A^{\alpha}\end{matrix} \right] \] are introduced. It is assumed that B is comparable to \(A^{\alpha}\) for \(0<\alpha \leq 1\). The authors prove that for \(\rho >0\), \(0\leq \theta \leq\), \[ {\mathcal D}\{(-A_{\rho \alpha})^{\theta}\}={\mathcal D}\{A^{+\theta (1-\alpha)}\}\times {\mathcal D}\{A^{\alpha \theta}\}, \] while for \(\leq \theta \leq 1,\) \[ {\mathcal D}\{(-A_{\rho \alpha})^{\theta}\}=\{\left[ \begin{matrix} x\\ y\end{matrix} \right]\in E:\;x\in {\mathcal D}\{A^{+\theta (1- \alpha)}\},\quad y\in {\mathcal D}\{A^{\alpha -+\theta (1-\alpha)}\},\quad A^{1-\alpha}x+\rho y\in {\mathcal D}\{A^{\alpha \theta}\}\}. \] Application to second order equations with fractional damping are discussed.