Optimal decay rates and the selfadjoint property in overdamped systems

We deal with abstract linear strongly damped wave equations. In the so-called overdamped regime we show the occurrence of two interesting phenomena. The first is the existence of an explicit special inner product which makes the problem selfadjoint. The second is an improvement of the decay rate for more regular solutions that will be of an exponential–polynomial type. Furthermore, we prove the optimality of this decay rate.