Decay for the Kelvin-Voigt damped wave equation: Piecewise smooth damping

Abstract: We study the energy decay rate of the Kelvin-Voigt damped wave equation with piecewise smooth damping on the multi-dimensional domain. Under suitable geometric assumptions on the support of the damping, we obtain the optimal polynomial decay rate which turns out to be different from the one-dimensional case studied in \cite{LR05}. This optimal decay rate is saturated by high energy quasi-modes localised on geometric optics rays which hit the interface along non orthogonal neither tangential directions. The proof uses semi-classical analysis of boundary value problems.