Sharp polynomial energy decay for locally undamped waves

Abstract

In this note, we present the results of the article [LL14], and provide a complete proof in a simple case. We study the decay rate for the energy of solutions of a damped wave equation in a situation where the Geometric Control Condition is violated. We assume that the set of undamped trajectories is a flat torus of positive codimension and that the metric is locally flat around this set. We further assume that the damping function enjoys locally a prescribed homogeneity near the undamped set in traversal directions. We prove a sharp decay estimate at a polynomial rate that depends on the homogeneity of the damping function.