General decay of the solution energy in a viscoelastic equation with a nonlinear source (Q949683)

The author considers the initial-boundary value problem \[ \begin{aligned} &u_{tt}(x,t)-\triangle u(x,t)+ \int_0^t g(t-\tau)\triangle u(x,\tau)d\tau=| u| ^\gamma u(x,t)\;\text{in} \;\varOmega\times (0,\infty),\\ &u(x,t)=0,\;x\in \partial\varOmega,\;t\geq 0;\;u(x,0)=u_0(x),\;u_t(x,0)=u_1(x),\;x\in \varOmega, \end{aligned} \] where \(\varOmega\) is a bounded domain of \(\mathbb{R}^n\;(n\geq 1)\) with a smooth boundary \(\partial\varOmega,\;\gamma>0\) and \(g:[0,\infty)\to (0,\infty)\) is a nonincreasing function. He shows that the solution energy decays at the rate of decay of the relaxation function, which is not necessarily decaying in a polynomial or exponential fashion. This result allows a larger class of relaxation functions.