Optimal Polynomial Stabilization of the Linearized Periodic Whitham--Boussinesq System

Abstract

We study the stabilization of the linearized periodic Whitham--Boussinesq system on the one-dimensional torus. We establish the well-posedness of the conservative and damped dynamics in the natural energy space and describe the spectral structure of the conservative generator, whose frequencies exhibit sublinear growth of order $|k|^{1/2}$ at high frequency. We then prove strong stability of the damped semigroup and obtain a high-frequency resolvent estimate with linear growth in the spectral parameter. Under genuinely localized damping, a family of high-frequency quasimodes provides the matching lower bound and shows that this resolvent growth is optimal. By the Borichev--Tomilov theorem [5], we deduce a $t^{-1}$ decay rate for the semigroup on the domain of the generator, corresponding to a $t^{-2}$ decay rate for the energy. Under the same localization assumption, these polynomial decay rates are optimal.