A general method for proving sharp energy decay rates for memory-dissipative evolution equations

This Note is concerned with stabilization of hyperbolic systems by a distributed memory feedback. We present here a general method which gives energy decay rates in terms of the asymptotic behavior of the kernel at infinity. This method, which allows us to recover in a natural way the known cases (exponential, polynomial, . . . ), applies to a large quasi-optimal class of kernels. It also provides sharp energy decay rates compared to the ones that are available in the literature. We give a general condition under which the energy of solutions is shown to decay at least as fast as the kernel at infinity.