A note on maximal rate of decay for solutions to some semilinear wave equations (Q914044)

The author studies the decay properties for solutions u(t) of \[ \partial^ 2_ tu-\Delta u+| u|^{p-1}u=0,\quad x\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n,\quad t>0,\quad u|_{t=0}=\phi,\quad \partial_ tu|_{t=0}=\psi \quad (p:\;odd\quad integer), \] where (\(\phi\),\(\psi\)) is smooth, and small measured in some Sobolev spaces. A main result is that \(\| u(t)\|_{\dot H^{s'}_{p'}}\) decays exactly at \(t^{-(n-1)(1/2-1/p')}\) as \(t\to \infty\), where \(\| f\|_{\dot H^{s'}_{p'}}=\| {\mathcal F}^{-1}(| \xi |^{s'}{\mathcal F}f(\xi))\|_{L^{p'}}\) \((p'\geq 2,\quad s'\geq 1).\) Therefore, the decay order is the same as that of the solution of \(\square u=0\) with nontrivial data, which implies that a perturbation by the above nonlinear term is small globally in time for small data.