Energy decay for linear dissipative wave equations in exterior domains

In earlier works [2,12], we have shown the uniform decay of the local energy of the damped wave equation in exterior domain when the damper is spatially localized near captive rays. In order to have uniform decay of the total energy, the damper has also to act at space infinity. In this work, we establish uniform decay of both the local and global energies. The rates of decay turn out to be the same as those for the heat equation, which shows that an effective damper at space infinity strengthens the parabolic structure in the equation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.