Asymptotic behavior of a parabolic-hyperbolic system

We consider a parabolic equation nonlinearly coupled with a damped semilinear wave equation. This system describes the evolution of the relative temperature $\vartheta$ and of the order parameter $\chi$ in a material subject to phase transitions in the framework of phase-field theories. The hyperbolic dynamics is characterized by the presence of the inertial term $\mu\partial_{t t}\chi$ with $\mu>0$. When $\mu=0$, we reduce to the well-known phase-field model of Caginalp type. The goal of the present paper is an asymptotic analysis from the viewpoint of infinite-dimensional dynamical systems. We first prove that the model, endowed with appropriate boundary conditions, generates a strongly continuous semigroup on a suitable phase-space $\mathcal V_0$, which possesses a universal attractor $\mathcal A_\mu$. Our main result establishes that $\mathcal A_\mu$ is bounded by a constant independent of $\mu$ in a smaller phase-space $\mathcal V_1$. This bound allows us to show that the lifting $\mathcal A_0$ of the universal attractor of the parabolic system (corresponding to $\mu=0$) is upper semicontinuous at $0$ with respect to the family $\{\mathcal A_\mu,\mu>0\}$. We also construct an exponential attractor; that is, a set of finite fractal dimension attracting all the trajectories exponentially fast with respect to the distance in $\mathcal V_0$. The existence of an exponential attractor is obtained in the case $\mu=0$ as well. Finally, a noteworthy consequence is that the above results also hold for the damped semilinear wave equation, which is obtained as a particular case of our system when the coupling term vanishes. This provides a generalization of a number of theorems proved in the last two decades.