New examples of damped wave equations with gradient-like structure Romain JOLY Institut Fourier UMR 5582, Universite Joseph Fourier, CNRS 100, rue des Maths, BP74 F-38402 St Martin d'Heres, FRANCE Abstract : This article shows how to use perturbation methods to get new examples of evolutionary partial differential equations with gradient-like structure. In particular, we investigate the case of the wave equation with a variable damping satisfying the geometric control condition only, and the case of the wave equation with a damping of indefinite sign. Keywords : gradient structure, gradient-like systems, perturbation methods, damped wave equation, indefinite damping AMS Codes (2000) : 35B40, 35B41, 37L05, 37L45 1 Introduction A large class of physical problems lead to dissipative systems, that is physical systems which admit an energy decreasing along the trajectories and the trajectories of which asymptotically tend to equilibria. Such particular systems have been called gradient sys- tems or gradient-like systems (see Definition 2.1 below). The gradient structure plays an important role in the qualitative study of the dynamics of an equation, since, for example, 1
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