On the Strongly Damped Wave Equation

We prove the existence of the universal attractor for the strongly damped semilinear wave equation, in the presence of a quite general nonlinearity of critical growth. When the nonlinearity is subcritical, we prove the existence of an exponential attractor of optimal regularity, having a basin of attraction coinciding with the whole phase-space. As a byproduct, the universal attractor is regular and of finite fractal dimension. Moreover, we carry out a detailed analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the solutions in dependence of the damping coefficient.Research partially supported the Italian MIUR Research Projects Problemi di Frontiera Libera nelle Scienze Applicate, Aspetti Teorici e Applicativi di Equazioni a Derivate Parziali and Metodi Variazionali e Topologici nello Studio dei Fenomeni Nonlineari. The second author was also supported by the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica F. Severi (INdAM).