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A one-step optimal energy decay formula for indirectly nonlinearly damped hyperbolic systems coupled by velocities

In this paper, we consider the energy decay of a damped hyperbolic system of wave-wave type which is coupled through the velocities. We are interested in the asymptotic properties of the solutions of this system in the case of indirect nonlinear damping, i.e. when only one equation is directly damped by a nonlinear damping. We prove that the total energy of the whole system decays as fast as the damped single equation. Moreover, we give a one-step general explicit decay formula for arbitrary nonlinearity. Our results shows that the damping properties are fully transferred from the damped equation to the undamped one by the coupling in velocities, different from the case of couplings through displacements as shown in \cite{AB01, ACK01, AB02, AL12} for the linear damping case, and in \cite{AB07} for the nonlinear damping case. The proofs of our results are based on multiplier techniques, weighted nonlinear integral inequalities and the optimal-weight convexity method of \cite{AB05, AB10}.