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Long-time behaviour of small solutions in the viscoelastic Klein–Gordon equation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2026

Louis Garénaux
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Björn de Rijk*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
*
Corresponding author: Björn de Rijk; Email: bjoern.rijk@kit.edu
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Abstract

We investigate the long-time behaviour of solutions with small initial data to the viscoelastic Klein–Gordon equation with general smooth nonlinearity. Our analysis relies on the space-time resonances method to eliminate all nonresonant quadratic and cubic terms. A key difficulty arises from the viscous damping, which introduces a nonzero real part in the coefficient of the remaining critical resonant term. By carefully decomposing the solution into a Gaussian profile and a zero-mean remainder, we isolate the leading-order resonant dynamics. We identify a sign condition under which these dynamics are of absorption type. In this case, we prove global-in-time existence and enhanced diffusive decay for solutions with small initial data, and we characterize their leading-order asymptotics. Conversely, when this condition fails, the reduced resonant dynamics exhibit finite-time blow-up. In this regime, global existence is not expected, but solutions with small initial data persist and decay diffusively over exponentially long time intervals.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. Depiction of the spectrum of the operator $\Lambda$, which consists of the half line $\smash{(-\infty,-\tfrac{1}{\alpha}]}$ and the intersection of the closed left-half plane with the circle with centre $\smash{-\tfrac{1}{\alpha}}$ and radius $\smash{\sqrt{1+\alpha^{-2}}}$. At frequency $k = 0$, the curves $\lambda_\pm(k)$ (depicted in red and blue) touch the imaginary axis in a quadratic tangency at the points $\pm \mathrm{i}$.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Depiction of the real (solid) and imaginary (dashed) parts of the spectral curves $\lambda_\pm(k)$ as a function of the spatial frequency $k$. Left: plot of $\lambda_+(k)$, corresponding to the red curve in Figure 1. Right: plot of $\lambda_-(k)$, corresponding to the blue curve in Figure 1. At frequency $k=0$, the real parts of $\lambda_\pm(k)$ vanish quadratically.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Depiction of the set (4.12) for $0 \lt \gamma \lt 2$ (left panel) and for $\gamma \gt 2$ (right panel) under the condition that $\alpha^2 - \alpha \gamma + 1 \gt 0$. In case $\alpha^2 - \alpha \gamma + 1 \leq 0$, the set (4.12) is confined to the negative real line.